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COMPANION TO THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION<br />
Contents<br />
Introduction 4<br />
Profiles of vice-presidents 17-23<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> departments 6<br />
Jean-Claude Juncker 8-9<br />
Role of the vice-presidents 10<br />
Project teams 11<br />
Frans Timmermans 12<br />
Deregulation 13<br />
Federica Mogherini 14<br />
Foreign policy 15 & 16<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> work 24-26<br />
programme<br />
Profiles of commissioners 27-53<br />
Team Juncker: the <strong>full</strong> list 34-35<br />
Secretariat-general 42<br />
Gender balance 54<br />
Useful links and locations 55<br />
Pay grades and salaries 56-57<br />
Writers Paul Dallison | Andrew Gardner | Nicholas Hirst | Dave Keating | Tim King | Cynthia Kroet | James Panichi |<br />
Simon Taylor<br />
Design Paul Dallison | Jeanette Minns<br />
Cover Marco Villard<br />
Graphics Michael Agar | Darren Perera<br />
Artwork iStock | European Parliament | EPA<br />
European Voice provides<br />
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3
INTRODUCTION<br />
The European <strong>Commission</strong> that began<br />
work on 1 November 2014 is an<br />
administration on trial. Its president,<br />
JeanClaude Juncker, has promised an<br />
agenda of change – for the administration<br />
that he leads and for the European Union as<br />
a whole. The two are related: Juncker<br />
believes that reforms made to the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> will have beneficial<br />
consequences for the work of the EU and<br />
therefore for how the EU is perceived in the<br />
wider world.<br />
From the outset, Juncker has made<br />
changes to the structure of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> – to the way commissioners are<br />
organised and to the departmental<br />
configurations. In doing so, he has sent<br />
ripples of unease through the community of<br />
EUwatchers who had grown familiar with<br />
old ways of doing things. One of the<br />
questions examined during the course of this<br />
Companion to the European <strong>Commission</strong> is<br />
whether the changes that have been made<br />
are simply cosmetic or whether they will be<br />
of deep, lasting significance.<br />
This publication has a twin purpose. It sets<br />
out to explain the new structures and to put<br />
them in context. It also provides an<br />
introduction to the people who will adorn<br />
those structures: the 28 European<br />
commissioners and their staff. We explain<br />
where they have come from and suggest<br />
what their priorities might be. The aim is to<br />
put some human faces on what is often<br />
derided as a faceless bureaucracy. We do so<br />
not because we want the <strong>Commission</strong> to be<br />
loved, but because we think it should be<br />
understood.<br />
There has been much talk in recent years<br />
of how the European <strong>Commission</strong> has lost<br />
power relative to the other EU institutions –<br />
the European Parliament and the Council of<br />
Ministers. That is indeed the case, but the<br />
EU as a whole gained in power as a result of<br />
the Lisbon treaty of 2009. Moreover, the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> is still the biggest and most<br />
complex of the three main EU institutions.<br />
The commissioners and their various<br />
departments will continue to make an<br />
impact on EU policy.<br />
The nature of such a volume is that it must<br />
be selective. If it were complete, it would be<br />
overweight and unread. This is a trimmer<br />
and more entertaining read, which still<br />
aspires to be useful. How long it remains so<br />
is in the lap of the gods, or perhaps Juncker.<br />
For the speed with which it becomes<br />
obsolete may be indicative of the success of<br />
Juncker’s reforms – or their failure.<br />
Tim King<br />
Editor, European Voice<br />
Brussels, February 2015<br />
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4<br />
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Competitiveness<br />
Begins with Confidence<br />
President Juncker is demonstrating decisive leadership<br />
in the design of the new <strong>Commission</strong> and by clearly<br />
differentiating many policy lines from the past.<br />
The key to success is in building confidence.<br />
That extends to business confidence too.<br />
Care must be taken not to simply talk competitiveness<br />
while undermining the industry we have. The EU must<br />
nurture a broad and balanced industrial base, especially<br />
its existing manufacturing industry, to sustain the<br />
European economy of the twenty first century.<br />
Policies once set must not be systematically revisited<br />
and changed. That destroys investor confidence.<br />
The EU must re-establish itself as a reliable location to<br />
invest, so that boardrooms in Europe and around the<br />
world extend existing manufacturing operations in the<br />
EU and inject new investment.<br />
The simple truth is that business needs stable policy<br />
and legal certainty to invest with confidence. Do the right<br />
thing, please, Mr. President!<br />
GOOD LUCK TO THE JUNCKER COMMISSION.<br />
International Paper Europe has reduced its greenhouse gas<br />
emissions by 73% since 1990. It is committing to reduce them<br />
a further 20% by 2020 (baseline 2010).<br />
The Company is currently planting in Poland what will be one<br />
of Europe’s largest woody biomass plantations providing<br />
carbon neutral energy for it’s manufacturing operations.<br />
5
DEPARTMENTS<br />
Juncker moves the pieces<br />
The European <strong>Commission</strong> began 2015<br />
with various changes to departmental<br />
structure taking effect.<br />
The changes were the result of a<br />
restructuring of <strong>Commission</strong> departments<br />
announced by JeanClaude Juncker, the<br />
president of the <strong>Commission</strong>, before he<br />
took office, reflecting in particular his<br />
thinking on how the <strong>Commission</strong> should<br />
support the economy and regulate business.<br />
The old directorategeneral for the internal<br />
market and services (DG MARKT), and the<br />
old directorategeneral for enterprise and<br />
industry (DG ENTR) were the two<br />
departments most affected by the changes.<br />
From the former, the responsibility for<br />
regulating financial services was stripped<br />
out to create a standalone department: the<br />
new directorategeneral for financial<br />
stability, financial services and capital<br />
markets union (DG FISMA). To it were<br />
added some units that were previously part<br />
of the directorategeneral for economic and<br />
financial affairs.<br />
The parts of the old DG MARKT that dealt<br />
with other economic sectors – focusing in<br />
particular on ensuring the free movement<br />
of goods and services as applied to those<br />
sectors – were transferred to the revamped<br />
DG Enterprise, which was renamed DG<br />
Growth (abbreviated to DG GROW). It also<br />
takes in the unit for health technology and<br />
cosmetics that was previously in the<br />
directorategeneral for health and<br />
consumers (DG SANCO).<br />
The unit dealing with copyright was<br />
moved from the internal market<br />
department to the department for<br />
communications networks, content and<br />
technology. The decision reflected the<br />
thinking that revising copyright rules for the<br />
digital age was a priority.<br />
The elements of DG SANCO that dealt<br />
with consumer policy were transferred to<br />
the directorategeneral for justice. DG<br />
SANCO has therefore been reduced to the<br />
directorategeneral for health and its<br />
abbreviation revised to DG SANTE.<br />
One of the effects of the changes is that<br />
the departmental responsibilities are more<br />
closely aligned with those of particular<br />
European commissioners. So DG GROW’s<br />
mandate is now more closely aligned with<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the European<br />
commissioner for internal market, industry,<br />
entrepreneurship and SMEs. DG FISMA’s<br />
mandate more closely matches the<br />
responsibilities of Jonathan Hill, the<br />
European commissioner for financial<br />
stability, financial services and capital<br />
markets union.<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> departments<br />
Agriculture and rural development (AGRI)<br />
Budget (BUDG)<br />
Climate action (CLIMA)<br />
Communication (COMM)<br />
Communications networks, content<br />
and technology (CNECT)<br />
Competition (COMP)<br />
Economic and financial affairs (ECFIN)<br />
Education and culture (EAC)<br />
Employment, social affairs and inclusion<br />
(EMPL)<br />
Energy (ENER)<br />
Environment (ENV)<br />
Eurostat (ESTAT)<br />
Financial stability, financial services and<br />
capital markets union (FISMA)<br />
Health and food safety (SANTE)<br />
Humanitarian aid and civil protection (ECHO)<br />
Human resources and security (HR)<br />
Informatics (DIGIT)<br />
Internal market, industry, entrepreneurship<br />
and SMEs (GROW)<br />
International co-operation and<br />
Development (DEVCO)<br />
Interpretation (SCIC)<br />
Joint research centre (JRC)<br />
Justice and consumers (JUST)<br />
Maritime affairs and fisheries (MARE)<br />
Migration and home affairs (HOME)<br />
Mobility and transport (MOVE)<br />
Neighbourhood and enlargement<br />
negotiations (NEAR)<br />
Regional and urban policy (REGIO)<br />
Research and innovation (RTD)<br />
Secretariat-general (SG)<br />
Service for foreign policy instruments (FPI)<br />
Taxation and customs union (TAXUD)<br />
Trade (TRADE)<br />
Translation (DGT)<br />
6
e-Contacts EP<br />
7
PRESIDENT<br />
Jean-Claude Juncker<br />
President of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong><br />
Country<br />
Born<br />
Luxembourg<br />
Redange, Luxembourg,<br />
9 December 1954<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter @JunckerEU<br />
JeanClaude Juncker has described the<br />
administration that he now heads as the<br />
“lastchance <strong>Commission</strong>” – one that has<br />
to restore trust in the European Union. If it<br />
fails, he implies, the credibility of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> will be lost forever.<br />
The oddity is that this lastchance<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> is headed by a secondchance<br />
politician. Juncker’s political career looked<br />
to have reached the end of the line when,<br />
after 18 years as prime minister of<br />
Luxembourg, he was forced to call a general<br />
election in 2013 and his political opponents<br />
formed a coalition that kept his centreright<br />
party out of government.<br />
That defeat proved to be the launchpad<br />
for another phase in his parallel career as a<br />
European Union politician. Despite the<br />
much talkedabout misgivings of Angela<br />
Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, he became<br />
the candidate of the centreright European<br />
People’s Party (EPP) for the presidency of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>, ie, the EPP went into the<br />
European Parliament elections saying that it<br />
wanted him to head the <strong>Commission</strong>. When<br />
the EPP emerged as the party with most<br />
seats in the European Parliament, his drive<br />
for the <strong>Commission</strong> presidency became<br />
unstoppable – whatever the objections of<br />
some members of the European Council (of<br />
whom David Cameron was the most vocal).<br />
So, improbably, Juncker, who had been<br />
talked about as a possible European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president in 2004, when José<br />
Manuel Barroso was first nominated, and<br />
again in 2009 as a possible president of the<br />
European Council, when Herman Van<br />
Rompuy was chosen, became president of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> in 2014.<br />
What made this secondcoming all the<br />
more surprising was that Juncker had<br />
become a figure of declining authority on<br />
the European stage. Although he had been<br />
a constant presence on the EU scene for 25<br />
years, his influence seemed to be waning in<br />
the second decade of the 21st century.<br />
At the creation of the euro in 1999,<br />
meetings of the eurozone finance ministers<br />
– the Eurogroup – did not have formal<br />
decisionmaking powers. Eurogroup<br />
meetings were by definition informal –<br />
8<br />
because the countries outside the eurozone<br />
(particularly the United Kingdom) were<br />
reluctant to grant them greater status.<br />
However, it was always clear that the<br />
Eurogroup would matter (its importance<br />
was belatedly recognised in the EU’s Lisbon<br />
treaty, which granted it formal status) and<br />
in 2004 the Eurogroup decided its<br />
chairmanship should be made semipermanent.<br />
Juncker became the first president of the<br />
Eurogroup in part because, as well as being<br />
finance minister of Luxembourg, a position<br />
he had held since 1989, he was also prime<br />
minister – a position he had succeeded to in<br />
1995 when Jacques Santer became<br />
president of the European <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
As the head of a government, he had<br />
access to the offices of other government<br />
leaders (inside and outside the EU) that<br />
other finance ministers would not have.<br />
So as prime minister, Juncker was a member<br />
of the European Council from 19952013. As<br />
finance minister, he was attending the<br />
Council of Ministers from 19892009, after<br />
which he was still attending meetings of the<br />
Eurogroup as its president until the<br />
beginning of 2013.<br />
But as the eurozone went from creditcrunch<br />
to sovereign debt crisis to<br />
widespread recession, Juncker’s star was<br />
eclipsed, in part because responsibility for<br />
responding to events passed up to the<br />
European Council. The likes of Angela<br />
Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy became the key<br />
figures – along with JeanClaude Trichet, the<br />
president of the European Central Bank, and<br />
his successor Mario Draghi. In comparison,<br />
Juncker seemed – perhaps understandably –<br />
exhausted.<br />
All this makes the resurrection of his<br />
European career, in the new incarnation of<br />
president of the European <strong>Commission</strong>,<br />
intriguing. Never before has an incoming<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president had such a lengthy<br />
apprenticeship on the European stage.<br />
Never before has a <strong>Commission</strong> president<br />
had such a wealth of contacts across the<br />
European Union’s member states and<br />
beyond.<br />
But how does somebody so steeped in<br />
Europe’s past succeed in persuading voters<br />
that from now on things are different?<br />
Arguably Juncker ought to know Europe’s<br />
problems better than anyone, but does that<br />
mean that he has viable solutions?<br />
At the outset of his <strong>Commission</strong><br />
presidency, Juncker presented 10 strategic<br />
priorities that he planned to pursue – a far<br />
cry from the sprawling wishlist that have<br />
sometimes been espoused by incoming<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> presidents.<br />
He also announced a change to the<br />
structure of the college of commissioners<br />
and presented his plans for reorganising<br />
the structure of <strong>Commission</strong> departments.<br />
He has given the appearance of having a<br />
rediscovered sense of purpose. His<br />
admirers believe that his political<br />
awareness and his ability to forge<br />
compromises will give new purpose to the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> that he heads. His doubters<br />
fear that he no longer has the energy or<br />
stamina to stay the course, and to stay<br />
engaged with the <strong>Commission</strong>’s work across<br />
such a broad front of policy portfolios.<br />
Whether those doubts are allayed may<br />
depend on his ability to manage his team<br />
effectively. His appointment of Frans<br />
Timmermans as first vicepresident was<br />
more than just politically astute (a balance<br />
of centreright and centreleft). It also sent<br />
a strong signal that he was not embarking<br />
on a ‘lookatme’ presidency. Modern<br />
politics – and the expansion of the EU to 28<br />
states – seem to dictate that European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> administrations should be<br />
quite centralised, but Juncker’s lengthy<br />
political experience may have made him<br />
readier to share the limelight with others.<br />
Quite apart from Timmermans and Federica<br />
Mogherini, three of his vicepresidents are<br />
exprime ministers. Juncker is ready to<br />
share the workload. What he will provide is<br />
an intimate knowledge of the EU and<br />
wisdom accumulated over many years.
CV<br />
2004-13<br />
President of the Eurogroup<br />
1995-2013<br />
Prime minister of Luxembourg<br />
1995-2013<br />
Minister of state<br />
1989-2009<br />
Minister for finance<br />
1989-99<br />
Minister for labour<br />
1984-89<br />
Minister for labour, minister<br />
delegate for the budget<br />
1982-84<br />
State secretary for labour and social<br />
security<br />
1974<br />
Joined the CSV party<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Martin Selmayr<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Clara Martinez Alberola<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Sandra Kramer<br />
Luc Tholoniat<br />
Paulina Dejmek-Hack<br />
Carlo Zadra<br />
Antoine Kasel<br />
Telmo Baltazar<br />
Pauline Rouch<br />
Léon Delvaux<br />
Richard Szostak<br />
The cabinet<br />
Juncker’s private office is dominated by<br />
officials who worked for Viviane Reding<br />
when she was commissioner for three<br />
terms. Martin Selmayr was head of her<br />
private office when she was<br />
commissioner for justice, fundamental<br />
rights and citizenship. Other members<br />
of the office who worked for Reding<br />
include Richard Szostak, Paulina<br />
Dejmek-Hack, Telmo Baltazar, and<br />
Pauline Rouch. Clara Martinez-Alberola,<br />
a Spaniard who is deputy head of<br />
cabinet, used to work for José Manuel<br />
Barroso. Sandra Kramer, a Dutch official<br />
who is in charge of administrative<br />
issues, was in the <strong>Commission</strong>’s justice<br />
department before joining Juncker’s<br />
private office.<br />
Martin Selmayr<br />
Head of Juncker’s cabinet<br />
Country<br />
Born<br />
Twitter<br />
Germany<br />
Bonn, Germany,<br />
5 December 1970<br />
@MartinSelmayr<br />
Martin Selmayr, who heads the<br />
private office of JeanClaude<br />
Juncker, is already regarded as one<br />
of the most powerful people in the new<br />
administration. Indeed, people see his<br />
influence even when it is not there. Talked<br />
about in hushed tones, he is given almost<br />
mythical status, a latterday Count Olivares to<br />
Philip IV of Spain, or Cardinal Richelieu to<br />
Louis XIII of France, or (perhaps less<br />
fantastically) Pascal Lamy to Jacques Delors.<br />
Mythmaking is part of Selmayr’s art. He is a<br />
clever lawyer, who became a highly effective<br />
spindoctor, and then a policy adviser with his<br />
hands on patronage. He has used all these<br />
skills to such good effect that he now has<br />
many loyal supporters and not a few bitter<br />
enemies.<br />
He has worked for ten years in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, but is still perceived by many as<br />
an outsider. He has not worked inside a<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> department. He has risen by<br />
making himself useful – even indispensable –<br />
to commissioners, and he has raised others<br />
after him.<br />
Now aged 44, Selmayr is by background an<br />
academic lawyer. He studied at the<br />
Universities of Geneva and Passau, at King’s<br />
College London, and at UCLA, Berkeley.<br />
He received a doctorate from Passau in 2001,<br />
with a thesis on the law of economic and<br />
monetary union. By then he had been<br />
working for the European Central Bank as<br />
legal counsel and then legal adviser.<br />
In 2001, he joined Bertelsmann, the German<br />
media company, and became head of its<br />
Brussels office in 2003. He has longestablished<br />
links with German Christian<br />
Democrats, notably Elmar Brok, a veteran<br />
MEP, who was retained by Bertelsmann.<br />
In 2004 Selmayr passed a European Union<br />
recruitment competition for lawyers and<br />
joined the <strong>Commission</strong> in November of that<br />
year. He became spokesperson for Viviane<br />
Reding, who was about to embark on her<br />
second term as a European commissioner,<br />
with the portfolio of information society and<br />
media.<br />
The portfolio included telecoms, and<br />
Selmayr’s greatest public relations triumph<br />
was winning credit for his commissioner for<br />
legislation to cap roaming charges. Although<br />
the telecoms companies complained that it<br />
HEAD OF CABINET<br />
was wealthy businesstravellers who stood to<br />
gain most from the cap, at the expense of<br />
other telecoms consumers, Selmayr<br />
positioned Reding and the <strong>Commission</strong> as the<br />
consumers’ champion. He clearly had a talent<br />
for massaging the message – he had a<br />
tendency to oversell his boss’s achievements<br />
and journalists soon learned to doublecheck<br />
what he said in briefings.<br />
But there was no doubting the strength of<br />
his bond with Reding. They were made for<br />
each other – neither was troubled by selfdoubt<br />
– and when she was nominated for a<br />
third term as Luxembourg’s European<br />
commissioner, he became head of her private<br />
office. It helped that Johannes Laitenberger,<br />
who had previously been head of Reding’s<br />
office, had by then advanced to head the<br />
office of José Manuel Barroso, the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president.<br />
Reding became commissioner for justice,<br />
fundamental rights and citizenship and was<br />
outspoken in her criticism of the Hungarian<br />
government’s treatment of Roma, and<br />
clashed on similar issues with the French and<br />
Italian governments.<br />
It was therefore a touch overconfident of<br />
Selmayr to develop plans for Reding to be the<br />
candidate of the European People’s Party for<br />
the presidency of the <strong>Commission</strong>. Selmayr<br />
sought to raise her profile as a champion of<br />
fundamental rights and gender equality with<br />
bold policy initiatives, such as the EU’s tough<br />
data protection rules and a bid to impose<br />
quotas on the number of women on company<br />
boards. It was beyond even his powers, but it<br />
did mean he was wellpositioned to take up<br />
the lance for JeanClaude Juncker, when a<br />
change of government in Luxembourg freed<br />
him to bid for the <strong>Commission</strong> presidency. He<br />
became campaign manager and was then<br />
appointed head of Juncker’s office.<br />
In turn, he has brought into the office of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president and the<br />
spokesperson’s service officials who had<br />
worked for him with Reding.<br />
Few doubt Selmayr’s energy or his ambition,<br />
which will go a long way to compensate for<br />
his lack of experience in the <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
How successful he is in enforcing the wishes<br />
of his master may depend on who is chosen<br />
as the next secretarygeneral of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
9
VICE-PRESIDENTS<br />
The chosen ones<br />
From the moment that JeanClaude<br />
Juncker announced that he was<br />
creating a tier of seven vicepresidents<br />
with greater powers than the remaining 20<br />
commissioners, there were questions about<br />
what would make the vicepresidents<br />
different.<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong> has had vicepresidents<br />
before – there were initially seven in the<br />
201014 college, later increased to eight by<br />
the promotion of the commissioner for<br />
economic and monetary affairs – but apart<br />
from drawing a higher salary, it was hard to<br />
see what distinguished the vicepresidents<br />
from the others, not least because José<br />
Manuel Barroso assigned each<br />
commissioner a separate policy area.<br />
Juncker changed all that by making vicepresidents<br />
responsible for particular teams<br />
of commissioners (see opposite page).<br />
So in practice the ordinary commissioners<br />
become answerable to the vicepresidents.<br />
In turn, the vicepresidents have<br />
responsibility for policy areas that overlap<br />
or overlay those of the ordinary<br />
commissioners.<br />
So much for the theory. The question on<br />
many people’s lips was how will it work in<br />
practice? How much power would the vicepresidents<br />
have if they had no control of<br />
individual <strong>Commission</strong> departments? How<br />
would the ordinary commissioners<br />
respond to vicepresidential oversight?<br />
It did not take long (just one month) for<br />
the first clues and hints to emerge about<br />
the dynamics between commissioners and<br />
vicepresidents.<br />
On 2 December 2014, three members of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> went to the European<br />
Parliament to appear before a joint meeting<br />
of the committees for economic and<br />
monetary affairs and employment and<br />
social affairs. The three were led by Valdis<br />
Dombrovskis, the vicepresident for the<br />
euro and social dialogue, who was<br />
accompanied by Pierre Moscovici, the<br />
commissioner for economic and financial<br />
affairs, taxation and customs, and Marianne<br />
Thyssen, the commissioner for employment,<br />
social affairs, skills and labour mobility.<br />
Dombrovskis presented to MEPs the broad<br />
outlines of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s approach with<br />
an overview of the economic situation as<br />
well as an explanation of the annual growth<br />
strategy, stressing the importance of<br />
structural reform and financial<br />
responsibility. Moscovici talked about the<br />
situation of individual member states and<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s assessment of their<br />
national budget plans, while Thyssen<br />
addressed employment issues and labour<br />
market reforms.<br />
10<br />
One of the important developments is that<br />
the Parliament is responding to the changed<br />
structure of the <strong>Commission</strong> with its own<br />
improvisations: in this case, a joint meeting<br />
of its committees.<br />
One committee on its own could not<br />
encompass the breadth of Dombrovskis’s<br />
responsibilities. Moscovici later addressed<br />
the economic and monetary affairs<br />
committee separately for a more specific<br />
discussion about national finances.<br />
The next day (3 December), the EU was<br />
represented at the EUUS energy council in<br />
Brussels by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s<br />
foreign policy chief, Maroš Šefčovič, the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s vicepresident for energy<br />
union, and Miguel Arias Cañete, the<br />
European commissioner for climate action<br />
and energy.<br />
It is still not <strong>full</strong>y clear how the division of<br />
labour (and of status) will work out between<br />
Šefčovič and Cañete, though it was Cañete<br />
who went to Lima for international talks on<br />
climate change.<br />
The gap between Mogherini and the other<br />
commissioners working on foreign policy –<br />
Johannes Hahn (neighbourhood policy and<br />
enlargement negotiations); Cecilia<br />
Malmström (trade); Neven Mimica<br />
(international cooperation and<br />
development); and Christos Stylianides<br />
(humanitarian aid and crisis management) –<br />
is much clearer. Mogherini is not just a<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> vicepresident, but also the<br />
EU’s high representative for foreign affairs<br />
and security policy, and that, along with the<br />
resources of the European External Action<br />
Service, gives her extra status.<br />
In similar ways, Frans Timmermans – as<br />
first vicepresident – has been given extra<br />
status. He is in charge of better regulation,<br />
interinstitutional relations and rule of law.<br />
Both he and Kristalina Georgieva, the vicepresident<br />
with responsibility for budget and<br />
human resources, have remits that run<br />
across all <strong>Commission</strong> departments.<br />
On the other hand, it looks as if it will be<br />
harder for the more policyspecific vicepresidents<br />
to establish just how they are<br />
different from the commissioners beneath<br />
them (or alongside them?).<br />
The most intriguing potential source of<br />
tension is between Günther Oettinger, who<br />
has embarked on his second term as<br />
Germany’s European commissioner, but is<br />
not a vicepresident, and Andrus Ansip, a<br />
former prime minister of Estonia. The<br />
former is the commissioner for the digital<br />
economy and society; the latter is now<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> vicepresident for the digital<br />
single market.<br />
When Juncker and Timmermans were<br />
drawing up the <strong>Commission</strong>’s work<br />
programme for 2015, they convened a<br />
meeting of the vicepresidents, but the<br />
other 20 commissioners were not invited.<br />
It is here that, in theory at least, the vicepresidents<br />
have considerable power. They<br />
can promote – or, conversely, filter out –<br />
the projects of their commissioners.<br />
This gives a clue as to what makes the<br />
vicepresidents different: they enjoy their<br />
special power at the discretion of the<br />
president. It is effectively his delegated<br />
power that makes them more important<br />
than the other 20. If he convenes a meeting<br />
with the vicepresidents, they have his ear,<br />
the others do not.<br />
Logically, Juncker must refuse to allow the<br />
other commissioners to bypass their<br />
vicepresidents and to seek a direct line to<br />
him.
PROJECT TEAMS<br />
Team players?<br />
The President of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> has named seven vicepresidents<br />
responsible for designated<br />
policy areas. The other 20 commissioners<br />
are arranged in project teams and are<br />
answerable to one or more vicepresidents.<br />
Despite this obvious hierarchy, Jean<br />
Claude Juncker has been at pains to stress<br />
that it is a college of equals. “In the new<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, there are no first or secondclass<br />
commissioners – there are team<br />
leaders and team players,” he said when he<br />
unveiled his lineup in September 2014.<br />
Juncker warned the commissioners to<br />
prepare themselves for a “new collaborative<br />
way of working”.<br />
The vicepresidents “steer and coordinate”<br />
the work of other commissioners<br />
within “welldefined priority projects”.<br />
Juncker has said that he is delegating to<br />
his vicepresidents the power to stop<br />
members of their team from bringing a<br />
legislative proposal to the entire college.<br />
He will also delegate to the vicepresidents<br />
the resources of his secretariatgeneral.<br />
Project team<br />
Better regulation, interinstitutional<br />
relations, the rule of law, the Charter<br />
of Fundamental Rights and<br />
sustainable development<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Frans Timmermans<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
All of them<br />
Project team<br />
Budget and human resources<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Kristalina Georgieva<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
All of them<br />
Project team<br />
A deeper and fairer Economic and<br />
Monetary Union<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Valdis Dombrovskis (the euro and social<br />
dialogue)<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
Pierre Moscovici (economic and financial<br />
affairs, taxation and customs)<br />
Marianne Thyssen (employment, social<br />
affairs, skills and labour mobility)<br />
Jonathan Hill (financial stability, financial<br />
services and capital markets union)<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska (internal market,<br />
industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs)<br />
Tibor Navracsics (education, culture,<br />
youth and sport)<br />
Corina Creţu (regional policy)<br />
Vĕra Jourová (justice, consumers and<br />
gender equality)<br />
Project team<br />
A stronger global actor<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Federica Mogherini (high representative<br />
of the EU for foreign affairs and security<br />
policy)<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
Johannes Hahn (European neighbourhood<br />
policy and enlargement negotiations)<br />
Cecilia Malmström (trade)<br />
Neven Mimica (international<br />
cooperation and development)<br />
Christos Stylianides (humanitarian aid<br />
and crisis management)<br />
Project team<br />
A new boost for jobs, growth and<br />
investment<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Jyrki Katainen (vicepresident for jobs,<br />
growth, investment and competitiveness)<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
Günther Oettinger (digital economy and<br />
society)<br />
Pierre Moscovici (economic and financial<br />
affairs, taxation and customs)<br />
Jonathan Hill (financial stability, financial<br />
services and capital markets union)<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska (internal market,<br />
industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs)<br />
Marianne Thyssen (employment, social<br />
affairs, skills and labour mobility)<br />
Corina Crețu (regional policy)<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete (climate action and<br />
energy)<br />
Violeta Bulc (transport)<br />
Project team<br />
A resilient energy union with a forwardlooking<br />
climate change policy<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Maroš Šefčovič (energy union)<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete (climate action and<br />
energy)<br />
Violeta Bulc (transport)<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska (internal market,<br />
industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs)<br />
Karmenu Vella (environment, maritime<br />
affairs and fisheries)<br />
Corina Creţu (regional policy)<br />
Phil Hogan (agriculture and rural<br />
development)<br />
Carlos Moedas (research, science and<br />
innovation)<br />
Project team<br />
A digital single market<br />
Who is in charge?<br />
Andrus Ansip (digital single market)<br />
Which commissioners are involved?<br />
Günther Oettinger (digital economy and<br />
society)<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska (internal market,<br />
industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs)<br />
Marianne Thyssen (employment, social<br />
affairs, skills and labour mobility)<br />
Vĕra Jourová (justice, consumers and<br />
gender equality)<br />
Pierre Moscovici (economic and financial<br />
affairs, taxation and customs)<br />
Corina Creţu (regional policy)<br />
Phil Hogan (agriculture and rural<br />
development)<br />
11
FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
F<br />
Better regulation, inter-institutional<br />
relations, rule of law and charter<br />
of fundamental rights<br />
Country<br />
Born<br />
rans Timmermans<br />
The Netherlands<br />
Maastricht,<br />
6 May 1961<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@TimmermansEU<br />
The choice of Frans Timmermans as<br />
righthand man to JeanClaude<br />
Juncker, the president of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, is a dream come true for the<br />
enthusiastically proEuropean Dutchman.<br />
Indeed, Timmermans, who as first vicepresident<br />
is officially as well as informally<br />
Juncker’s deputy, has a CV made to<br />
measure for a top post with an international<br />
organisation.<br />
When he was appointed as the<br />
Netherlands’ foreign affairs minister after<br />
the Dutch elections of 2012, diplomats said<br />
Timmermans was born for the job. He was<br />
wellinformed, understood foreign policy<br />
like no other and had language skills which<br />
are matched by few others in the college of<br />
commissioners. What is more he had the<br />
ambition and drive to go further.<br />
Then his popularity in the Netherlands<br />
received a boost – an unforeseen<br />
consequence of the MH17 plane crash in<br />
Ukraine in July 2014. Timmermans’s<br />
emotional speech mourning the death of so<br />
many Dutch men and women at the UN<br />
Security Council did not go unnoticed<br />
abroad either – if nothing else, his<br />
impeccable English made him stand out. His<br />
ability to speak Russian – a legacy of his<br />
military service as an intelligence officer –<br />
has also continued to serve him well as<br />
tension along the EU’s eastern border<br />
continues to mount.<br />
Besides Russian, English and Dutch<br />
Timmermans speaks German, French and<br />
Italian – a range he was more than happy to<br />
put on display at his hearing as a<br />
commissionerdesignate at the European<br />
Parliament. This drive to prove himself was<br />
applauded by the MEPs but seen as a<br />
weakness by some at home where it is<br />
considered unseemly to show off.<br />
Born in the Dutch bordercity of<br />
Maastricht, but growing up in nearby<br />
Heerlen, Timmermans attended primary<br />
school in nearby Belgium. He may have<br />
inherited some of his famously fiery<br />
temperament from his father, a policeman<br />
who later became a security officer at the<br />
Dutch foreign ministry, the job took him –<br />
and his son – all over Europe.<br />
At university in Nijmegen and Nancy,<br />
12<br />
Timmermans studied French literature for<br />
pleasure and European law to find a job.<br />
Following a diplomatic career that took him<br />
to Moscow, he became a member of staff<br />
for a European commissioner, Hans van den<br />
Broek, then private secretary to his mentor,<br />
Max van der Stoel, the high commissioner<br />
for minorities at the Organisation for<br />
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).<br />
He entered the Dutch parliament in 1998,<br />
becoming Labour’s foreignpolicy<br />
spokesman, but left when he joined the<br />
government as secretary of state for<br />
European affairs in 200710.<br />
Timmermans can appear aloof – some say<br />
he is a “classic social democrat” rather than<br />
a man of the people. However, his widely<br />
visited Facebook page on which he regularly<br />
posts pictures of football matches, his visits<br />
to the Pinkpop festival and other events in<br />
his private life suggests he understands the<br />
need to connect.<br />
The runup to the 2012 general election in<br />
the Netherlands did not suggest a<br />
ministerial career would be inevitable for<br />
Timmermans – in fact, with his Labour Party<br />
attracting low support it appeared<br />
Timmermans’s career had hit a wall. An<br />
attempt to be appointed governor of his<br />
native Limburg province failed, as did a bid<br />
to become the Council of Europe’s<br />
commissioner for humanrights. But his time<br />
CV<br />
2012-14 Foreign minister<br />
2010-12 Member of Dutch parliament<br />
2007-10 European affairs minister<br />
1998-2007 Member of Dutch parliament<br />
1995-98 Private secretary to OSCE high<br />
commissioner for national minorities<br />
1994-95 Assistant to European<br />
commissioner Hans van den Broek<br />
1993-94 Deputy head of department for<br />
developmental aid<br />
1990-93 Deputy secretary, Dutch<br />
embassy in Moscow<br />
1997-90 Policy office, ministry of foreign<br />
affairs<br />
1984-85 Postgraduate courses in<br />
European law and French literature,<br />
University of Nancy<br />
1980-85 Degree in French language and<br />
literature, Radboud University, Nijmegen<br />
was about to come.<br />
Once ensconced in the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, Timmermans was awarded an<br />
enlarged portfolio which included<br />
‘sustainable development’, something S&D<br />
MEPs had demanded as a condition for<br />
their approval of Spain’s nominee to be<br />
commissioner for energy and climate<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete.<br />
Juncker, a longtime friend, assigned<br />
Timmermans the ‘better regulation’<br />
portfolio in response to longstanding<br />
Dutch criticism of redtape and excess EU<br />
legislation. Timmermans has a lot on his<br />
plate.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Ben Smulders<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Michelle Sutton<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Antoine Colombani<br />
Liene Balta<br />
Riccardo Maggi<br />
Bernd Martenczuk<br />
Alice Richard<br />
Maarten Smit<br />
Saar Van Bueren<br />
Sarah Nelen<br />
Timmermans’ office is headed by Ben<br />
Smulders, a compatriot who was a<br />
principal legal adviser in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s legal service.<br />
Timmermans’ number two is Michelle<br />
Sutton, a British official who worked in<br />
the office of José Manuel Barroso. Other<br />
notable members of Timmermans’<br />
office include Antoine Colombani, a<br />
former competition department official<br />
who was spokesman for Joaquin<br />
Almunia when he was commissioner for<br />
competition, and Sarah Nelen, a Belgian<br />
who used to work for Herman Van<br />
Rompuy.
BETTER REGULATION<br />
To cut or not to cut?<br />
The unveiling of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s 2015 work programme<br />
was marred by a nasty fight with<br />
MEPs over the planned withdrawal of two<br />
proposals – one on air quality and another<br />
on waste – that had already started making<br />
their way through the legislative process.<br />
They were just two of 80 pieces of draft<br />
legislation in line to be axed.<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong> was taken aback by the<br />
ferocity of the opposition to its plan. But for<br />
many MEPs the issue was symptomatic of a<br />
larger problem: the <strong>Commission</strong>’s response<br />
to the surge in Euroscepticism across<br />
Europe, which is that citizens are unhappy<br />
at the EU ‘meddling’ in people’s everyday<br />
lives.<br />
Frans Timmermans, the first vicepresident<br />
in charge of ‘better regulation’,<br />
has stressed that the EU should be big on<br />
the big things and small on the small things.<br />
But critics point out that there is a good<br />
reason for some small things being dealt<br />
with at a European level. They worry that a<br />
deregulatory response to the rise in the<br />
Eurosceptic vote does not address the real<br />
problem – a lack of acceptance by the<br />
public of the European project.<br />
Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP,<br />
says the <strong>Commission</strong> is in danger of<br />
deregulation for deregulation’s sake. “I<br />
believe in smart trimming, not taking a<br />
blunt axe to the base of the tree,” she told<br />
Timmermans in December 2014. “The<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> should not throw the baby out<br />
with the bathwater by arbitrarily scrapping<br />
laws.”<br />
But Timmermans has sought to calm<br />
MEPs’ fears by insisting that his agenda is<br />
not to deregulate the EU. “Better<br />
regulation does not mean no regulation or<br />
deregulation,” he told MEPs. “We are not<br />
compromising on the goals we want to<br />
attain, we are looking critically at the<br />
methods we want to use.”<br />
Eventually, the <strong>Commission</strong> executed a<br />
Uturn on its plan to withdraw and redraft<br />
the airquality proposal, saying that it would<br />
instead work with MEPs and member states<br />
to adjust the plan as part of the normal<br />
codecision procedure. But it is sticking to<br />
its guns on the waste proposal (known as<br />
the ‘circular economy package’) and will put<br />
forward a new version in late 2015.<br />
Beyond the concerns about deregulation,<br />
many in the Parliament and the Council of<br />
Ministers have disputed the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
prerogative to ‘political discontinuity’ –<br />
withdrawing proposals that have already<br />
been adopted and started the legislative<br />
process. Much of this battle is about<br />
institutional power. Withdrawing the<br />
proposals was seen as an affront to the<br />
other two institutions.<br />
Many of the 80 pieces of legislation listed<br />
for withdrawal were chosen for reasons of<br />
obsolescence or redundancy, and their<br />
withdrawal was previewed by the ‘refit’<br />
report issued in 2014 by José Manuel<br />
Barroso, the then president of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. But 18 are being withdrawn<br />
because the <strong>Commission</strong> has deemed that<br />
no agreement is possible between member<br />
states, or between member states and<br />
MEPs. These include proposals for a<br />
directive on the taxing of motor vehicles<br />
that are moved from one country to<br />
another, a decision on the financing of<br />
nuclear power stations, a directive on rates<br />
of excise duty for alcohol, and a directive<br />
on medicinal prices.<br />
A proposed fund to compensate people<br />
who have suffered because of oil pollution<br />
damage in European waters is listed for<br />
withdrawal because “the impact<br />
assessment and relevant analysis are now<br />
out of date”.<br />
A proposed directive on taxation of<br />
energy products and electricity is listed for<br />
withdrawal because “Council negotiations<br />
have resulted in a draft compromise text<br />
that has <strong>full</strong>y denatured the substance of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> proposal”.<br />
Timmermans has indicated that Jean<br />
Claude Juncker’s <strong>Commission</strong> will be more<br />
aggressive about vetoing proposals if it<br />
thinks they have changed substantially<br />
during the legislative process.<br />
Proposed new rules on the labelling of<br />
organic products will be withdrawn unless<br />
there is an agreement between MEPs and<br />
member states within six months. A<br />
directive on maternity leave will also be<br />
withdrawn if there is no agreement within<br />
six months, although the <strong>Commission</strong> says<br />
that it would replace the latter with a new<br />
proposal.<br />
Over the course of 2015, MEPs will be<br />
watching closely for signs that the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> intends to scale back<br />
legislation. If this is indeed the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s strategy, it is unlikely to make<br />
much difference to the Euroscepticism felt<br />
in some parts of Europe.<br />
See pages 24-26 for more on<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s work programme<br />
13
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
Federica Mogherini<br />
High representative of the Union for<br />
foreign affairs and security policy<br />
Country Italy<br />
Born Rome, 16 June 1973<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@FedericaMog<br />
Even for a politician who has built a<br />
career around delivering grace under<br />
pressure, the intensity of the campaign<br />
levelled against Federica Mogherini ahead<br />
of her appointment to the EU’s top<br />
diplomatic post would have been unsettling.<br />
The youngest foreign minister in Italy’s<br />
republican history was attacked for her<br />
politics (too leftwing), her views on Ukraine<br />
(too proRussian), her CV (too thin) and<br />
even the writing style on her blog (too<br />
naïve).<br />
Yet the onslaught of criticism did not<br />
discourage the 41yearold, whose<br />
candidacy relied on Prime Minister Matteo<br />
Renzi’s rocksolid belief that it was Italy’s<br />
turn for a top European Union job. The<br />
Italians argued that opposition to<br />
Mogherini, coming largely from eastern and<br />
central European countries, was tactical<br />
rather than ideological. “It was about some<br />
member states using this as leverage to get<br />
a better deal for their own commissioners,”<br />
an Italian diplomatic source said at the time.<br />
Whatever the political machinations,<br />
Mogherini emerged with the plum position<br />
of High Representative of the Union for<br />
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and as a<br />
vicepresident of the <strong>Commission</strong>. As things<br />
turned out, one of Mogherini’s harshest<br />
critics, Poland, also secured a top EU role,<br />
when its prime minister, Donald Tusk, was<br />
appointed as president of the European<br />
Council.<br />
The whispering campaign against<br />
Mogherini had centred on her apparent<br />
cosying up to Russian President Vladimir<br />
Putin during a state visit as Italian foreign<br />
minister, in which she ruled out a “military<br />
solution” to the Ukrainian crisis. The Poles<br />
and the Baltic states were dismayed by<br />
the prospect of EU policy towards an<br />
increasingly assertive Russia being set by an<br />
Italian with a track record of appeasing<br />
Moscow.<br />
Even though Mogherini and Renzi<br />
ultimately won the day, since taking office<br />
Mogherini has been at pains to scupper the<br />
perception she is anything but a hardliner<br />
on Russia. Her first announcement when in<br />
office was a strongly worded statement on<br />
Ukraine, in which she dismissed as<br />
“illegal and illegitimate” elections held in<br />
14<br />
separatistcontrolled areas of the country.<br />
Yet even before Mogherini had a chance to<br />
settle into her new digs on the 11th floor of<br />
the Berlaymont building, Russia had come<br />
back to haunt her. A media report revealed<br />
the high representative’s spokeswoman,<br />
Catherine Ray, was married to a partner in a<br />
Brussels public relations firm that lobbies<br />
for Russian stateowned gas company<br />
Gazprom. Mogherini’s office was quick to<br />
shrug off the controversy, yet it was a<br />
reminder of what Mogherini has already<br />
said publicly: Russia is set to dominate her<br />
portfolio over the coming years.<br />
While Mogherini supporters argue that<br />
her proWestern credibility is beyond doubt,<br />
it is also true that her first political step was<br />
to sign up to the Italian Young Communist<br />
Federation in 1988, when she was a<br />
straightA student from a middleclass<br />
background in Rome. The daughter of film<br />
director Flavio Mogherini, Federica went to<br />
a local high school with a focus on<br />
languages (she speaks French, English and<br />
some Spanish). She went on to complete a<br />
degree at Rome’s Sapienza University, her<br />
thesis on Islam earning her top marks.<br />
Mogherini then became a party apparatchik,<br />
working for the Democratic Party (or its<br />
earlier postcommunist incarnations) in a<br />
foreignpolicy unit. It was at this time that<br />
she met her husband Matteo Rebesani, who<br />
was head of the international office of<br />
Walter Veltroni, then the mayor of Rome<br />
and a Democratic Party powerbroker. The<br />
CV<br />
2014 Foreign minister and<br />
international co-operation minister<br />
2013-14 Head of the Italian delegation to<br />
the NATO parliamentary assembly<br />
2008-14 Member of parliament<br />
2008-13 Member of the Parliamentary<br />
Assembly of the Council of Europe<br />
2008-present Member of the Italian<br />
Institute for Foreign Affairs<br />
2007 Fellow of the German Marshall<br />
Fund for the United States<br />
1994 Degree in political science from the<br />
University of Rome<br />
couple have two young daughters, Caterina<br />
and Marta.<br />
Mogherini’s rise through party ranks was<br />
swift and in 2008 she was elected to the<br />
Italian parliament. She remained factionally<br />
aligned with the PD’s old guard and her<br />
relationship with Renzi was marred by<br />
some disparaging remarks about him made<br />
from Mogherini’s Twitter account. Yet, in<br />
spite of the bad blood, Renzi wasted little<br />
time in awarding Mogherini the foreign<br />
ministry, only to back her all the way to<br />
Brussels a few months later.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Stefano Manservisi<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Oliver Rentschler<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Felix Fernandez-Shaw<br />
Fabrizia Panzetti<br />
Michael Curtis<br />
Peteris Ustubs<br />
Arianna Vannini<br />
Anna Vezyroglou<br />
Iwona Piorko<br />
Enrico Petrocelli<br />
Federica Mogherini has filled her<br />
cabinet with what she herself lacks:<br />
extensive experience of the EU’s<br />
institutions. That is true, above all, of<br />
her chief of staff, Stefano Manservisi, a<br />
fellow Italian. Southern Europeans<br />
predominate, but northern (and,<br />
importantly, central and eastern) Europe<br />
is also represented. Mogherini came to<br />
prominence in a government that<br />
praised itself as being part of the<br />
Erasmus generation; her own cabinet is<br />
youthful with some of the younger<br />
members also bringing links to the<br />
European Parliament and the Italian<br />
parliament.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS<br />
A focus on foreign policy<br />
One of the most important<br />
developments during the last<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong>, Barroso II,<br />
was the establishment of the European<br />
External Action Service (EEAS). One of the<br />
big questions for Juncker I is whether some<br />
of the structural damage done during the<br />
last five years can be repaired and relations<br />
between the foreign policy structures of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> and the EEAS made more<br />
harmonious.<br />
The creation of the EEAS outside the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> involved the transfer of<br />
hundreds of staff out of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
service into that of the EEAS, which was<br />
populated with a mix of ex<strong>Commission</strong><br />
officials, diplomats from the services of the<br />
member states, and officials previously<br />
employed in the secretariat of the Council<br />
of Ministers. In the process, divisions were<br />
created or widened between those now<br />
working in the EEAS and those who<br />
remained behind in the <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
JeanClaude Juncker indicated his desire<br />
to narrow the gap between the EEAS and<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> when he asked Federica<br />
Mogherini, the new high representative for<br />
foreign and security policy (who is also a<br />
vicepresident of the <strong>Commission</strong>) to<br />
establish her main office in the Berlaymont,<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s headquarters. Her<br />
predecessor, Catherine Ashton, had<br />
operated principally out of the EEAS’s<br />
headquarters.<br />
Arguably just as significant for the<br />
development of <strong>Commission</strong>EEAS relations<br />
as the location of Mogherini’s office is her<br />
choice of Stefano Manservisi to run that<br />
office. Manservisi, who is now her chef de<br />
cabinet, had been working in the EEAS – as<br />
the EU’s ambassador to Turkey – but he was<br />
a recent arrival from the <strong>Commission</strong>,<br />
where he had variously been directorgeneral<br />
for home affairs, directorgeneral<br />
for development and head of the office of<br />
Romano Prodi, when he was <strong>Commission</strong><br />
president. He has brought to Mogherini’s<br />
office a knowledge of how the <strong>Commission</strong><br />
works and a wealth of longstanding<br />
relationships that Ashton’s private office did<br />
not have.<br />
Manservisi will know that the EEAS will be<br />
stronger and work more efficiently if it can<br />
make greater use of the staff and resources<br />
of the <strong>Commission</strong> and coordinate its work<br />
with that of the foreign policy parts of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. Mogherini, who was previously<br />
Italy’s foreign minister, and who, as high<br />
representative for foreign and security<br />
policy, now chairs meetings of the EU’s<br />
foreign ministers, will be well aware that<br />
the member states do not want the EEAS to<br />
be swallowed up again by the <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
The point of creating the EEAS as a hybrid<br />
institution, outside the Council and the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, was to achieve a balance. The<br />
role of Mogherini, as both vicepresident of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> and high representative, is<br />
to embody that balance.<br />
The parts of the <strong>Commission</strong> that work on<br />
foreign policy are many and varied.<br />
Arguably the most institutionally curious is<br />
the Foreign Policy Instrument Service. It is a<br />
vestige of the old directorategeneral for<br />
external relations – a part that was not<br />
transferred into the EEAS because it deals<br />
with money and its budget remained with<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
The FPI dispenses money to implement<br />
the policies of the EEAS through various<br />
budgetary instruments: the instrument for<br />
operations of the common foreign and<br />
security policy; the instrument contributing<br />
to stability and peace; the partnership<br />
instrument (which provides some means to<br />
spend on cooperation with middleincome<br />
and highincome countries that do not<br />
qualify for development aid). Together<br />
these add up to less than €1 billion a year,<br />
but that is money that the EEAS covets.<br />
Continues on page 16<br />
15
FOREIGN AFFAIRS<br />
Continued from page 15<br />
(The budget of the EEAS is basically an<br />
administrative one – to pay for the people<br />
and buildings at the EEAS’s headquarters in<br />
Brussels and in the EU’s delegations<br />
abroad.) The staff of FPI are answerable<br />
directly to Mogherini, whereas the other<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> foreign policy departments<br />
answer to other European commissioners.<br />
Those other departments are:<br />
the directorategeneral for international<br />
cooperation and development (DG DEVCO),<br />
which is principally, but not exclusively,<br />
occupied with relations with lowincome<br />
developing countries, most of them being<br />
members of the African, Caribbean and<br />
Pacific organisation. The EU’s budget for the<br />
ACP remains separate from the rest of the<br />
EU’s budget and the <strong>Commission</strong> must<br />
account separately for the ACP budget.<br />
The directorategeneral for humanitarian<br />
aid and civil protection (DG ECHO), which<br />
coordinates the EU’s response to<br />
emergencies. As an instrument of foreign<br />
policy, it is necessarily much less strategic<br />
than DG DEVCO but does some of the EU’s<br />
most visible work abroad.<br />
The directorategeneral for neighbourhood<br />
and enlargement negotiations (DG NEAR). To<br />
what was previously the directorategeneral<br />
for enlargement has been added a<br />
directorate that was previously in DG DEVCO<br />
that handles relations with the countries of<br />
the neighbourhood, on the EU’s southern<br />
and eastern borders. That addition signals<br />
both the increasing importance of the<br />
neighbourhood and diminished expectations<br />
about any further admissions to EU<br />
membership in the short term.<br />
The directorategeneral for trade (DG<br />
TRADE) is one of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s most<br />
powerful departments, in part because it<br />
has acquired powers to act on behalf of the<br />
whole EU, in part because trade is so<br />
important to both domestic and foreign<br />
policy. Trade has long been an important<br />
instrument of foreign policy (witness the<br />
use of trade disputes in recent<br />
confrontations with Russia) and it is also<br />
now increasingly bound up with<br />
development policy.<br />
Additionally, there are various significant<br />
parts of other <strong>Commission</strong> departments<br />
that have an international dimension:<br />
agriculture; maritime affairs and fisheries;<br />
environment; climate action; migration and<br />
home affairs; mobility and transport;<br />
energy; economic and monetary affairs;<br />
research and innovation.<br />
Depending on the state of international<br />
negotiations (or international disputes), the<br />
foreign policy aspects of these policy<br />
departments will fluctuate, but overall it<br />
becomes obvious that coherent EU foreign<br />
policy depends on coordination of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s international work with that<br />
of the EEAS and the Council of Ministers.<br />
16<br />
One of the optimistic features of Juncker I<br />
is that the reorganisation of the European<br />
commissioners into teams offers a serious<br />
prospect of developing a team of<br />
commissioners working on aspects of<br />
foreign policy. If such teamwork becomes<br />
the norm across the whole <strong>Commission</strong> (see<br />
pages 1011) there is a greater prospect of it<br />
being established in the field of foreign<br />
policy. In theory, that possibility existed in<br />
the last <strong>Commission</strong>; in practice, Ashton did<br />
not make it happen. This time round, it<br />
seems more likely that Mogherini will make<br />
greater use of the likes of Johannes Hahn,<br />
Neven Mimica, Christos Stylianides and<br />
Cecilia Malmström. Just as importantly,<br />
Manservisi and Alain Le Roy, the incoming<br />
secretarygeneral of the EEAS, should be<br />
able to coordinate their work with<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> departments.
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
Kristalina Georgieva<br />
Budget and human resources<br />
Country Bulgaria<br />
Born Sofia, 13 August 1953<br />
Political affiliation None<br />
Twitter<br />
@KGeorgievaEU<br />
Kristalina Georgieva’s career as a<br />
European commissioner began so<br />
suddenly that her then 89yearold<br />
mother Minka learned the news from the<br />
television. The economist received a 3am<br />
phonecall from Bulgaria’s prime minister,<br />
Boyko Borisov, and within hours she was on<br />
a plane from the United States to Europe.<br />
The sense of urgency was real. Bulgaria’s<br />
first choice for the <strong>Commission</strong> in 2009,<br />
Rumiana Jeleva, had performed disastrously<br />
in her European Parliament hearing and the<br />
appointment of the new <strong>Commission</strong> had<br />
been put on hold until the country put<br />
forward another candidate. Georgieva, who<br />
at the time was vicepresident of the World<br />
Bank, did not hesitate to accept the role. “I<br />
agreed to become a commissioner because<br />
the situation wasn’t good for Bulgaria and<br />
there was a possibility of our reputation<br />
being hurt,” she said.<br />
Georgieva’s 2014 promotion to one of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s most important vice<br />
presidencies, overseeing the budget and<br />
human resources portfolio, was a reward<br />
for her success in the last <strong>Commission</strong>,<br />
when she was in charge of international<br />
cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis<br />
response. She is today the most senior<br />
technocrat in the <strong>Commission</strong>, one of only<br />
two of the seven vicepresidents never to<br />
have served as a national minister.<br />
Georgieva is the greatgranddaughter of<br />
Ivan Karshovski, a 19thcentury<br />
revolutionary considered to be one of the<br />
founding fathers of Bulgaria. While<br />
Georgieva grew up in a family with a proud<br />
history, her background was, in other<br />
respects, ordinary. Her mother ran a shop in<br />
Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, while her father<br />
was a construction engineer.<br />
At university in Sofia, Georgieva made a<br />
name for herself as a budding economist.<br />
But she also used her time to write poetry,<br />
play the guitar (the Beatles were a<br />
favourite), cook and dance. She remained at<br />
the same university for 16 years, producing<br />
a work on economics that remains a<br />
standard textbook. She specialised,<br />
however, in environmental economics,<br />
writing her doctorate linking environmental<br />
protection policy and economic growth in<br />
the United States.<br />
After the collapse of communism,<br />
Georgieva’s academic career took her, as a<br />
visiting scholar and professor, to the US,<br />
Europe and the Pacific. But she also<br />
developed a line as a consultant, bringing<br />
her into contact with the World Bank. That<br />
relationship turned into a 16year career<br />
which took her around the world, running<br />
World Bank programmes. She also set up a<br />
Bulgarian folk dance group at the World<br />
Bank’s headquarters in Washington DC.<br />
Georgieva seems to have left behind a<br />
consistently positive impression. Many<br />
described her as a woman who manages<br />
with an iron fist inside a velvet glove,<br />
someone of inexhaustible energy who can<br />
chafe at slow progress.<br />
Despite her long absence from Bulgaria,<br />
Georgieva’s voice has been heard in her<br />
home country. Her high profile prompted<br />
Borisov to consider her for the post of<br />
finance minister in 2009, but she chose<br />
instead to act as an adviser.<br />
That association with Borisov might<br />
suggest her politics are centreright. Ivan<br />
CV<br />
2010-14 European commissioner for<br />
international co-operation, humanitarian<br />
aid and crisis response<br />
2008-10 Vice-president and corporate<br />
Secretary of the World Bank<br />
2007-08 World Bank director for<br />
strategy and sustainable development<br />
2004-07 World Bank director for Russia<br />
2000-04 World Bank director for<br />
environmental strategy<br />
1983-99 Environmental economist,<br />
senior environmental economist, sector<br />
manager, sector director at the World<br />
Bank<br />
1992 Consultant, Mercer Management<br />
Consulting<br />
1987-88 Research fellow, London School<br />
of Economics and Political Science<br />
1986 PhD in economics, University of<br />
National and World Economy<br />
1977-93 Assistant professor/associate<br />
professor, University of National and<br />
World Economy<br />
1976 Master’s degree in political<br />
economy and sociology, University of<br />
National and World Economy<br />
Kostov, a former prime minister and fellow<br />
student at university, says otherwise.<br />
“Although she has very leftist beliefs, she is<br />
undoubtedly competent,” says Kosov, who<br />
now leads the rightwing Democrats for a<br />
Strong Bulgaria. What interests Georgieva<br />
are solutions, rather than politics. “For me,<br />
a problem exists to be solved,” she says.<br />
A strong performance in her first term as<br />
a commissioner, and as someone with<br />
experience of managing €20 billion in<br />
World Bank programmes, should help<br />
Georgieva deal with the EU’s regular,<br />
interinstitutional battles over the makeup<br />
of the budget which have now become her<br />
area of responsibility.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Mariana Hristcheva<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Andreas Schwarz<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Elisabeth Werner<br />
Sophie Alexandrova<br />
Dimo Iliev<br />
Michael Jennings<br />
Angelina Gros-Tchorbadjiyska<br />
Daniel Giorev<br />
Georgieva has chosen to retain fellow<br />
Bulgarian Mariana Hristcheva, her chief<br />
of staff in the Barroso II <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
Andreas Schwarz, her deputy chief of<br />
staff from Germany, was previously a<br />
member of the cabinet of the budget<br />
commissioner from Poland, Janusz<br />
Lewandowski and his replacement,<br />
Jacek Dominik. Michael Jennings,<br />
previously the spokesperson for former<br />
research commissioner Máire<br />
Geoghegan-Quinn, is Georgieva’s<br />
communications adviser.<br />
17
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
A<br />
Digital single market<br />
ndrus Ansip<br />
Country Estonia<br />
Born Tartu, 1 October 1956<br />
Political affiliation ALDE<br />
Twitter<br />
@Ansip_EU<br />
The 2014 resignation of Andrus Ansip<br />
marked the end of an era. Not only<br />
had he been the longestserving prime<br />
minister in Estonia’s history, he had also<br />
been the safe pair of hands who had<br />
shepherded the country through the<br />
crippling 200809 recession. Ansip had<br />
staked his career on beating the recession<br />
and the country had come out on top –<br />
even as the popularity of his right of centre<br />
Estonia Reform Party was in decline.<br />
Yet Ansip’s time at Estonia’s helm during<br />
the crisis did not get off to a flying start.<br />
While a burgeoning budget deficit required<br />
wholesale slashing, the person the<br />
conservative Ansip relied on most – his<br />
finance minister, Ivari Padar – had become<br />
distracted. Padar was top of the Social<br />
Democrats’ list for the European Parliament<br />
election and, detractors claimed, had lost<br />
focus. The tension between the two men<br />
erupted at a press conference, when they<br />
began bickering in front of astonished<br />
journalists.<br />
For the usually unflappable Ansip, it was<br />
the last straw. He fired Padar and two other<br />
ministers (thereby losing his majority in the<br />
parliament), took much of Padar’s work on<br />
himself and drafted drastic spending cuts.<br />
It was a gamble, but one that eventually<br />
paid off: Estonia’s quarterly gross domestic<br />
product grew by 2.6% in the last three<br />
months of 2009 (the best result in the EU,<br />
said Eurostat, the European <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
statistical office). At a time when the euro<br />
was languishing, Estonian fiscal policy in<br />
2009 – with low government debt and the<br />
EU’s third smallest deficit – became<br />
something of a guidepost for less disciplined<br />
European countries.<br />
Ansip had been leading the country since<br />
2005, and whatever his achievements in<br />
fending off the recession, by 2014 his<br />
government was on the wane. Ansip<br />
realised he had reached the end of the line<br />
and that only a fresh face could reverse the<br />
party’s fortunes at the 2015 elections.<br />
Born, raised and educated in Tartu, a<br />
quintessential university town, Ansip<br />
abandoned his career in organic chemistry<br />
in the first years of Estonian independence,<br />
entering the world of business and banking.<br />
With his prodigious memory for numbers<br />
and a scientist’s skill at hairsplitting<br />
18<br />
analysis, he would have felt at home in the<br />
financial sector. In English (his other foreign<br />
languages are Russian and German), Ansip is<br />
known to rattle off statistics like a walking<br />
almanac.<br />
In 1998, Ansip was elected mayor of Tartu,<br />
Estonia’s secondlargest city. It was a post<br />
that helped him ascend the ranks of the<br />
centreright Reform Party and, in 2004, he<br />
moved to Tallinn after being appointed<br />
economy minister (he spends his weekends<br />
in Tartu with his wife Anu, a gynaecologist,<br />
and the youngest of their three daughters).<br />
Personality has played a role in Ansip’s<br />
staying power. “Andrus is, in a certain way,<br />
a takeitorleaveit type of person,” said<br />
Igor Grazin, a party colleague. “He usually<br />
doesn’t have a secondary motive. Even<br />
people who don’t like him generally support<br />
him, or at least respect him.”<br />
Ansip headed his party’s list for the<br />
European elections last year and was later<br />
nominated as Estonia’s commissioner by his<br />
successor as prime minister, the 35yearold<br />
Taavi Rõivas. Given that Andris comes from<br />
one of the most digitally connected<br />
countries in the world, where citizens can<br />
vote online and wifi is omnipresent, it is<br />
not difficult to understand why JeanClaude<br />
Juncker appointed him to be vicepresident<br />
for the digital single market.<br />
CV<br />
2014 Elected as a member of the<br />
European Parliament<br />
2014 Member of the Estonian parliament<br />
2005-14 Prime minister<br />
2004-05 Minister of economic affairs<br />
and communications<br />
1998-2004 Mayor of Tartu<br />
1994-95 Deputy head of Tartu<br />
department, North Estonian Bank<br />
1993-94 Board member, Rahvapank<br />
1992 Degree in business management,<br />
York University, Toronto<br />
1983-86 Senior engineer, Institute of<br />
General and Molecular Pathology, Tartu<br />
State University<br />
1979 Degree in organic chemistry, Tartu<br />
State University<br />
The key question now is how Ansip shares<br />
this post with Günther Oettinger, the<br />
commissioner for the digital agenda. Ansip<br />
has not been one to share the spotlight in<br />
the past and already there has been the<br />
appearance of tension between the two<br />
men. Oettinger reportedly characterised<br />
Ansip as his ‘assistant’ during a closeddoors<br />
meeting in Berlin last year, implying<br />
that the role of vicepresident – which on<br />
paper gives Ansip oversight of digital policy<br />
– was merely ceremonial.<br />
Oettinger may be in for a shock: having<br />
guided Estonia through a difficult economic<br />
period, Ansip is unlikely to settle for being a<br />
wallflower in the coming term.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Juhan Lepassaar<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Kamila Kloc<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Laure Chapuis<br />
Jörgen Gren<br />
Aare Järvan<br />
Hanna Hinrikus<br />
Jasmin Battista<br />
Jeremy Smith<br />
Maximilian Strotmann<br />
Ansip’s private office is headed by Juhan<br />
Lepassaar, a young Estonian who<br />
worked in the office of Siim Kallas, who<br />
served two terms as commissioner.<br />
There are former members of Kallas’s<br />
private office working for Ansip,<br />
including Laure Chapuis, Max<br />
Strotmann and Hanna Hinrikus. One of<br />
the main players in the team is Jörgen<br />
Gren, a Swedish official who worked in<br />
the department for communications<br />
networks, content and technology and<br />
was the spokesman for the Swedish<br />
government when it held the presidency<br />
of the Council of Ministers in 2009.
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19
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
Maroš Sefčovič ˇ<br />
Energy union<br />
Country Slovakia<br />
Born Bratislava, 24 July 1966<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@MarosSefcovic<br />
Maroš Šefčovič’s competence in his<br />
first term as a European<br />
commissioner made him a<br />
respected member of JeanClaude Juncker’s<br />
team. After being given the transport and<br />
space portfolio, and impressing the<br />
European Parliament’s transport committee<br />
during his hearing, he was moved to the<br />
role of vicepresident for energy union<br />
when JeanClaude Juncker was forced to<br />
shuffle the pack after Alenka Bratušek’s<br />
disastrous performance in front of MEPs.<br />
The transport committee was so upset at<br />
the thought of losing Šefčovič that it wrote<br />
to Juncker asking that he be kept on. The<br />
committee did not get its way, and Šefčovič<br />
impressed in his second parliamentary<br />
hearing despite having just four days to<br />
swot up on EU energy policy. It helped that<br />
in the previous <strong>Commission</strong> his<br />
responsibilities included relations with the<br />
European Parliament.<br />
Fate has repeatedly placed Šefčovič in<br />
dramatic situations and his rise is all the<br />
more remarkable because he comes from<br />
the wrong side of the tracks. His mother<br />
worked in the post office and his father<br />
was, he says, a tough and selfmade man<br />
from a background devoid of privilege. But<br />
his parents had high expectations of their<br />
son, and he responded. He overcame his<br />
childhood shyness as his sporting talents<br />
emerged: he used to run the 100 metres in<br />
less than 11 seconds and still enjoys tennis,<br />
jogging and skiing.<br />
He won such high grades in economics<br />
and journalism in his first undergraduate<br />
year in Bratislava that he was selected for<br />
fasttrack training as a diplomat. Sent to<br />
Prague and then to Moscow, a new world<br />
opened up to him. At the prestigious State<br />
Institute of International Relations he<br />
studied the works of British and American<br />
politicians, learnt English and French,<br />
attended lectures from visiting Western<br />
professors and diplomats and had access to<br />
material about the events of 1968 that he<br />
was still unable to see when he returned to<br />
Czechoslovakia.<br />
With a doctorate in law to his credit, he<br />
entered the ministry of foreign affairs as an<br />
adviser, and was selected for a scholarship<br />
at Stanford, where his teachers included<br />
Milton Friedman, Condoleezza Rice and<br />
20<br />
George Schultz. His first foreign posting was<br />
to Zimbabwe, followed by a promotion to<br />
Ottawa – at which point, as Czechoslovakia<br />
split, in 1993, he had to decide which<br />
foreign service he wanted to stay with.<br />
He chose Slovakia (“the more adventurous<br />
option”), and within five years had risen to<br />
the position of director of the foreign<br />
minister’s office. In 1998, he came to<br />
Brussels for a year as deputy head of his<br />
country’s mission. After a brief spell as<br />
ambassador to Israel and another swift<br />
promotion in the foreign ministry, he<br />
returned to Brussels to head Slovakia’s<br />
mission, and – when Slovakia at last joined<br />
the EU – as his country’s permanent<br />
representative. In September 2009 he was<br />
appointed to the <strong>Commission</strong> as a stopgap<br />
replacement for his departing compatriot<br />
Ján Figel’, and spent three months in charge<br />
CV<br />
2010-14 European commissioner for<br />
inter-institutional relations and<br />
administration<br />
2009-10 European commissioner for<br />
education, training, culture and youth<br />
2004-09 Slovakia’s permanent<br />
representative to the EU<br />
2003 Director-general of European<br />
affairs section, Slovak foreign ministry<br />
2002 Director-general of bilateral cooperation<br />
section, Slovak foreign ministry<br />
2000 PhD in international and European<br />
law, Comenius University<br />
1999 Slovak ambassador to Israel<br />
1998 Deputy head, Slovak mission to the<br />
EU<br />
1996-98 Director and deputy director at<br />
the Slovak foreign minister’s office<br />
1992 Deputy chief of mission, Czech and<br />
Slovak embassy in Canada<br />
1991-92 Official, Czech and Slovak<br />
embassy in Zimbabwe<br />
1990 Adviser to the first deputy foreign<br />
minister, Czech and Slovak ministry of<br />
foreign affairs<br />
1990 Doctorate in law, Comenius<br />
University, Bratislava<br />
of education and culture.<br />
Educated among the elite in the dying<br />
years of the Soviet regime, he was a<br />
stagiaire in the foreign ministry in Prague<br />
during the Velvet Revolution. He was<br />
supposed, as a diplomat of a Soviet<br />
satellite, to be a member of the Communist<br />
Party, but the system collapsed before he<br />
received his membership card.<br />
Šefčovič has, therefore, packed an awful<br />
lot into his life – he was born in 1966 – and<br />
has made a significant mark in the<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong>. Completion of the<br />
European Union’s internal energy market is<br />
a priority of the Juncker <strong>Commission</strong> and<br />
Šefčovič could be just the man for the job.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Juraj Nociar<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Bernd Biervert<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Gabriela Kečkéšová<br />
Christian Linder<br />
Dagmara Maria Koska<br />
Peter Van Kemseke<br />
Manuel Szapiro<br />
L’ubomíra Hromková<br />
Šefčovič has kept on the majority of his<br />
team from when he was vice-president<br />
for inter-institutional relations and<br />
administrative affairs. Juraj Nociar,<br />
continues as head of his private office.<br />
Bernd Bievert, a German who was his<br />
deputy in the premanent representation,<br />
continues as his deputy head. Other<br />
members of the previous team include<br />
Gabriela Kečkéšová, a Slovak, and<br />
Christian Linder, a German official.
NUCLEAR ENERGY PLAYS A VITAL ROLE<br />
IN BUILDING AN AFFORDABLE, SECURE<br />
AND LOW-CARBON FUTURE FOR EUROPE<br />
European Union (EU) energy policies are generally driven by three objectives: combating climate change; competitiveness<br />
and security of energy supply. Nuclear energy is one of the main indigenous sources available to ensure Europe’s transition<br />
to an independent, low-carbon and competitive energy mix. The technology, components and fuel needed for Europe’s<br />
nuclear reactors can all be produced in the EU, helping to ensure security of supply.<br />
“In the past two decades, indigenous energy<br />
production in the European Union has steadily<br />
declined (…) It is however possible to slow<br />
down this trend in the medium term by further<br />
increasing the use of renewable energy,<br />
nuclear energy, as well as sustainable<br />
production of competitive fossil fuels<br />
where these options are chosen”<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong> Energy Security Strategy,<br />
28 May 2014<br />
EU’s total primary energy production*<br />
The nuclear industry in Europe<br />
131<br />
Nuclear power<br />
plants in the EU<br />
in<br />
600 million<br />
tons of CO 2 eg per year<br />
avoided in the EU due<br />
to nuclear generation<br />
Essentially available<br />
24/7,<br />
365 days/year<br />
14<br />
EU Member<br />
States<br />
55%<br />
of the EU’s<br />
low - carbon<br />
electricity<br />
800,000<br />
jobs supported by<br />
the nuclear<br />
industry in Europe<br />
21%<br />
Solid fuels<br />
17%<br />
Gas 10%<br />
Oil<br />
Westinghouse in Europe<br />
62<br />
1962<br />
first Pressurized Water<br />
Reactor (PWR) in<br />
Europe was built<br />
by Westinghouse<br />
60%<br />
of the nuclear power<br />
plants in the EU are<br />
based on Westinghouse<br />
technology<br />
22%<br />
Renewable<br />
29%<br />
Nuclear<br />
25<br />
commercial reactors<br />
designed and supplied<br />
by Westinghouse<br />
across Europe<br />
4,000<br />
highly-skilled and<br />
trained people across<br />
Europe, plus an<br />
additional 1,500<br />
contractors<br />
About Westinghouse<br />
Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of<br />
Toshiba Corporation, is the world's pioneering nuclear<br />
energy company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant<br />
products and technologies to utilities throughout the<br />
world. Westinghouse supplied the world's first pressurized<br />
water reactor in 1957 in Shippingport, Pa., U.S. Today,<br />
Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately<br />
one-half of the world's operating nuclear plants, including<br />
more than 50 percent of those in Europe. AP1000 ® is<br />
a trademark of Westinghouse Electric Company LLC.<br />
All rights reserved.<br />
54 out of the 58 French reactors are based on Westinghouse<br />
licensed technology.<br />
65 nuclear reactors in Europe are currently fuelled by<br />
Westinghouse (PWR – including VVER, BWR, AGR and Magnox).<br />
We have operations in 10 European countries.<br />
Our AP1000 ® reactor is the safest, most efficient and reliable<br />
design currently available in the worldwide marketplace.<br />
* Eurostat 2014<br />
21
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
Valdis Dombrovskis<br />
The euro and social dialogue<br />
Country Latvia<br />
Born Riga, 5 August 1971<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@VDombrovskis<br />
When Valdis Zatlers, Latvia’s<br />
president, announced in 2009 that<br />
he was asking Valdis Dombrovskis<br />
to form the country’s next government, no<br />
one even knew the whereabouts of the<br />
former finance minister and MEP. Then<br />
suddenly Dombrovskis appeared and<br />
bestowed upon journalists the day’s second<br />
headline: if the next government did not<br />
overhaul its budget immediately, Latvia<br />
would go bankrupt.<br />
The then 37yearold was criticised for<br />
scaremongering, while lawyers were quick<br />
to point out that countries do not go<br />
bankrupt, they go into default. Yet others<br />
lauded Dombrovskis for refusing to sugarcoat<br />
the message: Latvia’s economic<br />
outlook was dire and getting back into the<br />
black would be a “nearimpossible” task.<br />
As things turned out, Dombrovskis’s style<br />
– bleak content, drab tone – did not<br />
undermine his nomination and he became<br />
the youngest politician to head up a<br />
government in the EU. The prime minister’s<br />
centreright coalition went on to slash<br />
spending while imposing a raft of austerity<br />
measures that would have made most<br />
European leaders baulk.<br />
The story of Latvia’s economic collapse is<br />
well known. Gross domestic product (GDP)<br />
plummeted, hitting rock bottom at the end<br />
of 2008. Yet by 2010 the economy had<br />
largely recovered, while today Latvia is<br />
outperforming most EU countries. GDP<br />
grew by 4.8% in 2013 and 4.2% in 2014,<br />
making Dombrovskis the posterboy for<br />
austerity policies.<br />
The Dombrovskis era came to an end in<br />
2014 when the government resigned<br />
following the collapse of a supermarket roof<br />
in Riga, which killed 54 people. While direct<br />
responsibility for building standards lay with<br />
Riga’s city council, Dombrovskis said he<br />
accepted “moral and political responsibility”<br />
for the disaster.<br />
Yet Dombrovskis’s reputation as a<br />
competent, toughtalking and at times<br />
colourless technocrat who had turned<br />
around a moribund economy emerged<br />
unscathed. His choice as European<br />
commissioner for the euro and social<br />
dialogue was seen as largely unremarkable<br />
and not even his unwavering support for<br />
austerity was enough to give him much grief<br />
22<br />
at his hearing before the European<br />
Parliament last year.<br />
In a subdued – even boring – public<br />
appearance, the attacks by MEPs appeared<br />
to have little impact, with Dombrovskis’s<br />
monotonous delivery betraying no emotion<br />
at all. The commissionerdesignate was<br />
unwilling to reflect on the social impact of<br />
unemployment and poverty caused by his<br />
government’s austerity measures, saying he<br />
did what he had to do to get Latvia through<br />
the crisis.<br />
However, in his final statement<br />
Dombrovskis, who was an MEP between<br />
2004 and 2009, sounded slightly more<br />
conciliatory. He acknowledged MEPs’<br />
questions about mistakes he had made,<br />
saying that Latvia still needed to make<br />
progress on dealing with income inequality,<br />
strengthening the judiciary and stepping up<br />
energy independence. “There are<br />
shortcomings that Latvia should address,”<br />
he said.<br />
If Dombrovskis sounds more like a crusty<br />
bureaucrat than a politician, there is a<br />
reason for it: he began his career with a<br />
fouryear stint in Latvia’s central bank,<br />
cranking out analysis on macroeconomic<br />
indicators. It was a job that would have<br />
bored most people to death, yet for the<br />
CV<br />
2014 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
2014 Member of the Latvian parliament<br />
2011-present Founder and board<br />
member of Unity party<br />
2009-14 Prime minister<br />
2004-09 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
2002-04 Finance minister<br />
2001-02 Chief economist, Bank of Latvia<br />
2005-07 Master’s degree in customs<br />
and tax administration, Riga Technical<br />
University<br />
1993-96 Master’s degree in physics,<br />
University of Latvia<br />
1992-95 Degree in economics, Riga<br />
Technical University<br />
1989-93 Degree in physics, University of<br />
Latvia<br />
mathematicallyminded Dombrovskis it was<br />
a perfect match.<br />
A physicist and economist by training,<br />
Dombrovskis is arguably the most private<br />
individual to have emerged from Latvian<br />
politics in recent years. Even his former<br />
party members confessed to not knowing<br />
much about him.<br />
He is married with no children and when<br />
he is not crunching numbers he likes to play<br />
basketball and ski. Dombrovskis is<br />
reportedly meticulous and loves to engross<br />
himself in the minutiae of state finance,<br />
although one colleague said he could show<br />
up at a party equally prepared with a good<br />
joke and a poignant question on economic<br />
policy.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Taneli Lahti<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Massimo Suardi<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Karolina Leib<br />
Jan Ceyssens<br />
Raquel Lucas<br />
Elina Melngaile<br />
Gints Freimanis<br />
Žaneta Vegnere<br />
Rita Voine<br />
Dombrovskis has recruited Taneli Lahti,<br />
a former member of the private office of<br />
Olli Rehn when he was commissioner<br />
for economic and monetary affairs and<br />
the euro, to head his team. His<br />
communications adviser is Žaneta<br />
Vegnere, a Latvian who used to work for<br />
the European People’s Party group in the<br />
European Parliament.
VICE-PRESIDENT<br />
Jyrki Katainen<br />
Jobs, growth, investment and<br />
competitiveness<br />
Country Finland<br />
Born Siilinjärvi, 14 October 1971<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@jyrkikatainen<br />
By becoming Finland’s prime minister<br />
in 2011, Jyrki Katainen brought his<br />
centreright National Coalition Party<br />
(NCP) in from a long period out in the cold.<br />
Over two decades had gone by since<br />
Finland’s conservatives had last won a<br />
general election and the centreleft Social<br />
Democratic Party and the Centre Party had<br />
come to be seen as the natural parties of<br />
government.<br />
Katainen’s conservative renaissance did<br />
not come easily. The two months required<br />
to form a government were the country’s<br />
most protracted political negotiations in a<br />
quarter of a century and Katainen ended up<br />
leading a sixparty coalition which, in<br />
addition to the Social Democrats and<br />
centrists, included the Left Alliance, the<br />
Greens and the Swedish People’s Party – a<br />
centrist group representing ethnic Swedes.<br />
Observers largely agree that Katainen<br />
displayed admirable patience and flexibility<br />
at the negotiating table, managing to get<br />
the ideologically disparate players to agree<br />
to a groundbreaking policy programme,<br />
called “An open, fair and bold Finland.”<br />
Katainen was born in Siilinjärvi, a town of<br />
20,000 people, 400 kilometres north of<br />
Helsinki. The son of an aviation mechanic<br />
and a secretary at the municipal council, he<br />
embraced at a young age what he called the<br />
“four pillars” of conservative values:<br />
encouragement, education, tolerance, and<br />
caring. He was elected to the municipal<br />
council at the age of 22.<br />
From there, his rise was inexorable,<br />
although at one time he considered leaving<br />
politics for the civil service. Instead,<br />
supporters persuaded him to seek a<br />
national stage and, in 1999, he was elected<br />
to parliament. It was another four years<br />
before Katainen, aged 32, sought the<br />
chairmanship of the NCP, which was in<br />
urgent need of a makeover.<br />
The gambit paid off. In 2005 Katainen was<br />
elected one of the vicechairmen of the<br />
European People’s Party and, in 2007, he<br />
galvanised the NCP to a secondplace finish<br />
in the national elections, just one seat<br />
behind the centrists. He was tasked with<br />
heading the finance ministry in the fourparty<br />
government and in 2008 the Financial<br />
Times ranked him Europe’s best finance<br />
minister.<br />
Katainen made reform his signature<br />
theme, saying in 2011 that “the existing<br />
welfare state was designed for a very<br />
different Finland from the one that is<br />
emerging now”. A quarter of a century ago<br />
there were approximately 100 taxpayers for<br />
every 50 nontaxpaying residents, he<br />
argued; by 2025, the ratio will be 100 to 70.<br />
Once in the prime minister’s seat,<br />
Katainen took swift action to consolidate<br />
the budget through spending cuts and tax<br />
hikes, before announcing more cutbacks. It<br />
was bitter medicine for the Finns, but<br />
Katainen, at the time the EU’s youngest<br />
head of government, sought to administer it<br />
gently. “The Finnish people seem to respect<br />
the truth even though it is not pleasant,” he<br />
told European Voice. “People are really<br />
worried about the debt.”<br />
By the summer of 2014 Katainen’s time at<br />
the helm was drawing to a close. He let it be<br />
known that he was interested in a European<br />
role and his name was floated as a future<br />
president of the European <strong>Commission</strong>. In<br />
June 2014, when Finland’s former<br />
commissioner Olli Rehn stepped down to<br />
become a member of the European<br />
Parliament, Katainen resigned as NCP<br />
chairman and Finnish prime minister. He<br />
CV<br />
2014 European commissioner for<br />
economic and monetary affairs and the<br />
euro<br />
2011-14 Prime minister<br />
2007-11 Finance minister and deputy<br />
prime minister<br />
2006-12 Vice-president of the European<br />
People’s Party<br />
2004-14 President of National Coalition<br />
Party<br />
2001-04 Vice-president of National<br />
Coalition Party<br />
2001-04 First vice-president of the<br />
regional council of Northern Savonia<br />
1999-2014 Member of the Finnish<br />
parliament<br />
1998-2000 Vice-president of the youth<br />
section of the European People’s Party<br />
1998 Master’s degree in social sciences,<br />
University of Tampere<br />
replaced Rehn as the European<br />
commissioner for economic and monetary<br />
affairs and the euro, and Finland<br />
renominated him for the following term,<br />
when he was awarded the job of vicepresident<br />
for jobs, growth, investment and<br />
competitiveness.<br />
Katianen comes with a reputation as a<br />
budget hawk, which makes some nervous.<br />
However, he has been keen to suggest that<br />
he also believes in growth and is prepared<br />
to countenance lateral thinking to bring it<br />
about. One of his main tasks will be the<br />
design and implementation of the EU’s<br />
€315 billion investment fund.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Juho Romakkaniemi<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Hilde Hardeman<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Edward Bannerman<br />
Miguel Gil Tertre<br />
Valerie Herzberg<br />
Heidi Jern<br />
Aura Salla<br />
Grzegorz Radziejewski<br />
Jyrki Katainen brought the head of his<br />
private office when he was prime<br />
minister in Finland, Juho Romakkaniemi,<br />
to head up his team in Brussels. Other<br />
notable members include Hilde<br />
Hardeman, a Belgian historian and<br />
expert on Russia and Ukraine, as deputy<br />
head of office, Edward Bannerman, a<br />
former adviser to Catherine Ashton, and<br />
Valerie Herzberg, who used to work for<br />
Herman Van Rompuy.<br />
23
WORK PROGRAMME<br />
Change of direction<br />
The first annual work programme<br />
unveiled by the JeanClaude Juncker<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> was in many ways a<br />
departure from previous practice.<br />
For starters, the programme distributed in<br />
December 2014 was much lighter than in<br />
previous years. It listed only 23 initiatives<br />
planned for 2015, compared to an average<br />
of 130 new initiatives each year under José<br />
Manuel Barroso, Juncker’s predecessor as<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president.<br />
The 2015 work programme also listed<br />
80 pieces of proposed legislation for<br />
withdrawal. The average annual number<br />
under Barroso had been 30.<br />
“We are breaking with the practice of<br />
listing everything for fear of being<br />
incomplete,” Frans Timmermans, the first<br />
vicepresident of the <strong>Commission</strong>, told<br />
MEPs when unveiling the work programme.<br />
“Just because an issue is important doesn’t<br />
mean that the EU has to act on it.”<br />
He stressed that the <strong>Commission</strong> did not<br />
include anything in the work programme<br />
that it did not think could be dealt with in<br />
2015, breaking with the previous practice of<br />
listing all kinds of ideas but acting on only<br />
some of them. That, Timmermans<br />
explained, is why this year’s programme<br />
was so slimmeddown.<br />
The draft identifies ten areas of focus for<br />
the Juncker <strong>Commission</strong>’s first year.<br />
The new initiatives include a single market<br />
for capital (see right), a digital single market<br />
package (see page 26), an energy union<br />
communication (see page 26), a labour<br />
mobility package, a capital markets action<br />
plan, and a communication on a “renewed<br />
approach for corporate taxation in the<br />
single market in the light of global<br />
developments”.<br />
24<br />
A new boost for jobs, growth and<br />
investment<br />
A connected digital single market<br />
A resilient energy union with a<br />
forwardlooking climate change<br />
policy<br />
A deeper and fairer internal<br />
market with a strengthened<br />
industrial base<br />
A deeper and fairer economic and<br />
monetary union<br />
A reasonable and balanced free<br />
trade agreement with the United<br />
States<br />
An area of justice and<br />
fundamental rights based on<br />
mutual trust<br />
Working towards a new policy on<br />
migration<br />
A stronger global actor<br />
A union of democratic change<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong> is also planning to put<br />
forward an agenda on migration and a<br />
review of the EU’s decisionmaking process<br />
on geneticallymodified crops.<br />
The programme also envisages a<br />
“European Agenda on Security to address<br />
threats to the EU's internal security such as<br />
crossborder crime, cybercrime, terrorism,<br />
foreign fighters and radicalisation”. This<br />
agenda took on increased importance<br />
following the shootings in Paris in January<br />
2015.<br />
Financial services<br />
Creating a single market for capital is a<br />
major challenge that the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> of JeanClaude Juncker<br />
has set itself. But Jonathan Hill, the<br />
European commissioner for financial<br />
stability, financial services and capital<br />
markets union, would also be kept very<br />
busy simply by the raft of financial service<br />
reforms introduced by the last<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> – completing, implementing<br />
and fineturning the work.<br />
The main item hanging over from the<br />
Barroso <strong>Commission</strong> is a controversial<br />
proposal that could hand the European<br />
Central Bank the power to break up the<br />
European Union’s largest banks, specifically<br />
those considered ‘toobigtofail’. The draft<br />
legislation, as proposed, would also ban<br />
large global banks, which hold big consumer<br />
deposits, from engaging in socalled<br />
‘proprietary trading’.<br />
The proposal was presented in early 2014<br />
as an essential complement to banking<br />
union, a vast regulatory project that brought<br />
the largest eurozone banks and many noneurozone<br />
banks under one regulatory<br />
umbrella. Yet at the start of 2015, appetite<br />
for imposing further reforms on Europe’s<br />
banks was waning. Securing a strong deal will<br />
be a major challenge for Hill, and how he<br />
deals with that debate will be a significant<br />
test of his influence and ability.<br />
Hill has also promised to conduct a deep<br />
analysis of the cumulative effect of recent<br />
financial reforms on the financial sector,<br />
with action promised if it proves overly<br />
burdensome. Some of that work could be<br />
done behind the scenes, since the new<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> must adopt some 400<br />
implementing acts in the field of financial<br />
services.<br />
The Barroso II <strong>Commission</strong> introduced the<br />
idea of a banking union. In his election<br />
campaign, Juncker promised to create a
WORK PROGRAMME<br />
capital markets union (CMU). There is<br />
widespread agreement that Europe’s<br />
companies suffer from being too<br />
dependent on banks for their financing<br />
needs. A CMU would help diversify the<br />
source of funding. But if Juncker’s diagnosis<br />
is correct, the idea is far from new: a<br />
genuine CMU would be remarkably similar<br />
to the single market for capital promised in<br />
Article 3 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome (now<br />
incorporated into the EU treaty).<br />
The proposal has nonetheless generated<br />
plenty of interest from industry and MEPs.<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong> is likely to focus first on<br />
reforming the rules for securitisation and<br />
reducing the regulatory burden for SMEs<br />
looking to raise funding.<br />
Another idea being considered is to make<br />
it easier for pension and insurance funds to<br />
invest in infrastructure projects.<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong>’s plans will become<br />
clearer when it publishes an action plan in<br />
the autumn of 2015. This means that there<br />
will probably be little legislative debate on<br />
the CMU until the second half of Juncker’s<br />
mandate.<br />
See page 26 for more on<br />
the 2015 work programme<br />
25
WORK PROGRAMME<br />
Energy union<br />
One of the main priorities for the<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong> in 2015 will<br />
be completing the EU’s ‘energy<br />
union’, an idea given added impetus by<br />
events in Ukraine during 2014. JeanClaude<br />
Juncker indicated the importance that<br />
he attaches to this idea by making one<br />
of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s vicepresidents –<br />
Maroš Šefčovič – responsible for energy<br />
union.<br />
In 2011, member states committed<br />
themselves to completing implementation<br />
of the EU’s internal energy market by the<br />
start of 2014. That deadline was missed –<br />
by a long way. At the end of last year, the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> delivered a bleak assessment<br />
of the state of play. Today, Europe’s 28<br />
national energy markets are related, but<br />
not united. Member states have been slow<br />
to transpose and implement transparency<br />
and liberalisation rules. There are wide<br />
variations in energy prices, reflecting<br />
regulatory differences and imperfect<br />
market liquidity across national borders.<br />
Many doubt that the EU’s new energymarket<br />
oversight body has a sufficiently<br />
clear remit.<br />
In February, Šefčovič come up with a<br />
plan to get the EU’s energy union back on<br />
track. It emphasises interconnectors<br />
between EU member states. But this<br />
will face some resistance from national<br />
energy companies, particularly in France<br />
where there are concerns about the<br />
effect of cheap renewable energy coming<br />
from Spain and Germany. Concerns<br />
about energy security – particularly<br />
disruption to supplies from Russia – might<br />
not be enough to overcome such national<br />
interests.<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong>’s strategy identifies<br />
five areas of focus: supply security, a<br />
competitive and completed internal<br />
energy market, moderation of demand,<br />
decarbonisation, and research and<br />
innovation.<br />
26<br />
Digital single market<br />
Any political leader in the European<br />
Union brave enough to argue against<br />
the need to create a single digital<br />
market can expect to be mocked as an old<br />
fuddyduddy who wouldn’t know his app<br />
from his elbow. Which is why opposition to<br />
breaking down those national barriers,<br />
which are costing the EU an estimated<br />
€250 billion of additional economic growth<br />
each year, tends to occur behind closed<br />
doors.<br />
The political reality of the problem is no<br />
mystery. The EU’s 28 national governments<br />
have a myriad of rules for telecoms,<br />
copyright, data protection – in short,<br />
everything that is likely to get in the way of<br />
techbased startups. It means that the<br />
advantage of having a common market of<br />
500 million people is lost on tech startups<br />
and anyone wanting to harness the<br />
internet’s potential.<br />
Part of the problem may be cultural, with<br />
European businesses and bankers often<br />
biased against small, nimble companies and<br />
the young people behind them. But the<br />
national governments’ reluctance to pull<br />
down the barriers that prevent crossborder,<br />
techbased investment is what this<br />
story is really about.<br />
This is why the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
announcement that it will take steps to<br />
bring about a genuine digital single market<br />
is as ambitious as it is brave. In the list of<br />
priorities published shortly before Jean<br />
Claude Juncker became the president of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, he argued that EU citizens<br />
“should be subject to the same data<br />
protection and consumer rules, regardless<br />
of where their computer servers are based”.<br />
These objectives are nothing new: the<br />
former commissioner for the digital agenda,<br />
Neelie Kroes, had banged on about these<br />
issues for five years. Yet Juncker’s approach<br />
of chiselling away at resistance rather than<br />
confronting member states headon may<br />
give him room to move, with changes to<br />
data protection rules, simplifying consumer<br />
rules for online purchases and moves to<br />
make it easier for tech innovators to start<br />
their own company likely to be as good a<br />
way forward as any.<br />
Juncker will be able to rely on a zealous<br />
digital convert at the heart of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. Ann Mettler is a former<br />
outspoken critic of the EU’s lack of<br />
progress on digital issues and she was<br />
appointed in December 2014 to head the<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong>’s European Political<br />
Strategy Centre, Juncker’s inhouse thinktank.<br />
Yet the <strong>Commission</strong> has its work cut out<br />
for it. According to figures compiled by the<br />
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and<br />
Development, 67% of European companies<br />
have a website, but only 17% of them have<br />
taken an order over the internet. What this<br />
means is that business is failing to get a<br />
foothold in international online markets –<br />
leaving companies outside the EU to gain a<br />
competitive advantage.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Vytenis Andriukaitis<br />
Health and food safety<br />
Country<br />
Born<br />
Lithuania<br />
Yakut, Russia,<br />
9 August 1951<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@V_Andriukaitis<br />
Vytenis Andriukaitis, the combative<br />
new European commissioner for<br />
health and food safety, is unlikely to<br />
be daunted by any criticism that comes his<br />
way as he attempts to reform the European<br />
Union’s healthcare system: he has been<br />
through it all before at home in Lithuania.<br />
When Andriukaitis, a trauma and heart<br />
surgeon, became Lithuania’s health minister<br />
in 2012, he hurled himself into a healthcare<br />
overhaul – an endeavour that was bound to<br />
make him enemies. A mere six months<br />
passed before lawmakers launched a noconfidence<br />
motion against him, claiming the<br />
minister was leading the sector to financial<br />
and moral ruin. Andriukaitis welcomed the<br />
move and even added his name to the list<br />
of signatures needed to trigger the<br />
procedure. For this lifelong dissident, who<br />
had been hounded for half his adult life by<br />
the KGB, it was an opportunity to take the<br />
fight to his critics.<br />
He survived the eventual vote just as he<br />
had survived Siberia, where he was born to<br />
parents exiled by Soviet authorities, and just<br />
as he later survived an arrest and harrying<br />
by the KGB. He was 25 when he was<br />
detained for dissident activities, having just<br />
graduated from medical school in Kaunas.<br />
The authorities “exiled” him to Ignalina in<br />
northeastern Lithuania, near the site of an<br />
enormous nuclear power plant that was<br />
then under construction.<br />
This internal exile only motivated<br />
Andriukaitis, who found time amid his<br />
surgical duties to nurture a newfound<br />
fondness for history. Though he wrote his<br />
diploma dissertation on the medical history<br />
of Vilnius in the 19th century, Andriukaitis<br />
would much later use his nose for history to<br />
combat historical revisionism and to remind<br />
Lithuanians of their nation’s role in the<br />
Holocaust.<br />
Andriukaitis, who is married and has three<br />
children, started supporting the leftist<br />
model of statecraft early in life. When the<br />
independence movement in the late 1980s<br />
began to gather momentum, he called for<br />
the restoration of the preSecond World<br />
War Social Democratic Party of Lithuania.<br />
Over two decades of reform and market<br />
economics failed to dent Andriukaitis’s<br />
leftist, egalitarian convictions. On becoming<br />
Lithuania’s health minister, he vowed to<br />
correct the innumerable wrongs that, to his<br />
mind, had led to a high mortality rate and<br />
robbed many citizens of their basic right to<br />
affordable healthcare.<br />
“He has strong views and is not afraid to<br />
speak his mind, and this has caused him<br />
problems,” said one veteran Lithuanian<br />
politician. Others confirm this intensiveness,<br />
to the extent that Andriukaitis often gets<br />
carried away and is reluctant to listen to<br />
anyone else. Supporters say this is merely a<br />
reflection of how passionate he is about his<br />
beliefs and that, as a speaker of Polish,<br />
Russian, German and English, he can be very<br />
engaging.<br />
There can be no doubt that Andriukaitis<br />
has always been a fervent believer in<br />
Europe. In the years leading up to<br />
Lithuania’s 2004 membership of the EU, he<br />
was chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s<br />
European affairs committee and laboured to<br />
ensure compliance with accession criteria<br />
and stir up grassroots support.<br />
Now the 63yearold Europhile is a<br />
member of the EU’s powerful executive<br />
branch. Andriukaitis has outlined his<br />
CV<br />
2014 Vice-president of the World Health<br />
Assembly<br />
2012-14 Health minister<br />
2008-14 Member of parliament<br />
2001-04 Deputy speaker of the<br />
Lithuanian parliament<br />
1999-2000 Leader of LSDP<br />
1992-04 Member of parliament<br />
1990-92 Signatory of Lithuania’s act of<br />
independence<br />
1989 Founder of Social Democratic Party<br />
of Lithuania (LSDP)<br />
1984 Master’s degree in history, Vilnius<br />
University<br />
1975-93 Doctor and surgeon<br />
1975 Medical degree, Kaunas Institute of<br />
Medicine<br />
ultimate dream of creating a single space<br />
for healthcare services, particularly for<br />
mobile Europeans. Considering this is a<br />
marketplace with 500 million people and<br />
that healthcare remains a sovereign<br />
prerogative, this is an extremely ambitious<br />
dream.<br />
A more attainable idea would be to<br />
improve the quality of healthcare in poorer<br />
member states, but for this to come about<br />
there will first have to be a system of<br />
informationsharing in place. This alone will<br />
put Andriukaitis’s talents of persuasion to<br />
the test.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Arūnas Vinčiūnas<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Nathalie Chaze<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Paula Duarte Gaspar<br />
Vilija Sysaité<br />
Arūnas Ribokas<br />
Jurgis Gurstis<br />
Annika Nowak<br />
Marco Valletta<br />
The head of Andriukaitis’s private office<br />
is Arūnas Vinčiūnas, who was<br />
previously Lithuania’s deputy permanent<br />
representative to the EU. His deputy is<br />
Nathalie Chaze, a French official from<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s health department<br />
who was head of unit for healthcare<br />
systems. Paula Duarte Gaspar, who is<br />
Portuguese, was previously in the office<br />
of Tonio Borg and John Dalli, the<br />
previous commissioners for health.<br />
27
COMMISSIONER<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete<br />
Climate action and energy<br />
Country Spain<br />
Born Madrid, 24 February 1950<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@MAC_Europa<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete’s road towards<br />
the European <strong>Commission</strong> was<br />
littered with controversy. His long<br />
and colourful career in politics, his bizarre<br />
macho comments about the difficulty of<br />
debating with women, his shareholdings in<br />
two petrol companies – it was all on display<br />
as increasingly belligerent MEPs clashed with<br />
the veteran Spanish politician’s unbridled<br />
charisma during his confirmation hearings. Yet<br />
beneath the largerthanlife political figure lies<br />
a law lecturer’s grasp of his dossiers and an<br />
unwavering European vocation.<br />
Arias Cañete entered the European<br />
Parliament in 1986, the year Spain joined the<br />
European Economic Community. He was a<br />
Spanish senator at the time and was<br />
nominated to go to Brussels because he<br />
spoke several languages and had taught<br />
European law.<br />
Arias Cañete, the youngest member of the<br />
Spanish centreright delegation, rose quickly<br />
during his 13 years at the European<br />
Parliament. He was a prominent member of<br />
the agricultural committee from 198892, at a<br />
time when EU agricultural policy was<br />
undergoing major reform. He would also chair<br />
the fisheries committee and later chaired the<br />
regional policy committee.<br />
That interest in both the foodchain and the<br />
countryside stayed with him throughout his<br />
subsequent political career. In 2000, José<br />
Maria Aznar, the first centreright prime<br />
minister in Spain’s EUera, made Arias Cañete<br />
minister for agriculture, fisheries and food, a<br />
position he regained under the next centreright<br />
premiership, that of Mariano Rajoy,<br />
which began in 2011.<br />
Being minister for food in Spain is a<br />
particularly visible role, and one to which<br />
Arias Cañete’s bonhomie was ideally suited.<br />
He is well remembered for eating steaks to<br />
reassure consumers that Spanish beef was<br />
safe despite the discovery of mad cow disease<br />
in Spain.<br />
Arias Cañete’s relative popularity among the<br />
electorate comes from him being perceived as<br />
campechano, or ‘a good guy.’ He enjoys<br />
eating and drinking, and champions the Jerez<br />
wine of his region. Arias Cañete used to drive<br />
racing cars and is known for his collection of<br />
classic cars. He describes tinkering with them<br />
over the weekend as his number one pastime.<br />
In person, he is an animated storyteller<br />
28<br />
with a gruff, easy laugh. Yet his charisma<br />
masks a sharp intellect.<br />
His knowledge of EU agricultural policy and<br />
negotiations made him an obvious choice as<br />
agriculture minister, an important dossier in<br />
Spain, which is the EU’s second largest<br />
recipient of agricultural funds. Yet accusations<br />
of conflict of interest have dogged much of<br />
Cañete’s political career because of the way<br />
in which his political interests have overlapped<br />
with his family’s business interests, in<br />
particular in the agricultural sector.<br />
It was his and his family’s shareholdings in<br />
two petrol storage firms that sparked<br />
indignation among MEPs from the centreleft<br />
and the Greens during his confirmation<br />
hearing at the Parliament.<br />
Arias Cañete’s judgment also came up short<br />
during the election campaign for May’s<br />
European Parliament elections. Following a<br />
debate with Elena Valenciano, a centreleft<br />
MEP, that the head of the centreright’s list<br />
was widely perceived to have lost, Cañete said<br />
on morning television: “Debating with a<br />
woman is complicated. If you show intellectual<br />
superiority or corner her, you are a macho.”<br />
CV<br />
2014 Elected as a member of the<br />
European Parliament<br />
2011-14 Agriculture, food and<br />
environment minister<br />
2008-11 President of the joint committee<br />
of the European Union, Spanish congress<br />
2004-08 Executive secretary for<br />
economic and employment affairs,<br />
People’s Party<br />
2004-08 Representative for Cádiz,<br />
Spanish congress<br />
2000-04 Agriculture, fisheries and food<br />
minister<br />
1999-2000 State attorney<br />
1994 Town councillor, Jerez de la<br />
Frontera<br />
1986-99 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
1982-86 Member of regional parliament<br />
of Andalisia<br />
1979-82 Professor in civil law, University<br />
of Jerez de la Frontera<br />
1975-82 State attorney<br />
1971 Law degree, Complutense<br />
University of Madrid<br />
The comments spurred international<br />
headlines and Arias Cañete quickly<br />
apologised.<br />
That does not mean that he will not be a<br />
successful commissioner for energy. Skills<br />
that were valued in the Spanish cabinet have<br />
already begun to shine through in Brussels,<br />
where he is backed by a competent team.<br />
“Most people who were critical of his<br />
nomination are rather pleasantly surprised,”<br />
says GerbenJan Gerbrandy, a Dutch liberal<br />
MEP who travelled to Lima with several MEPs<br />
and Arias Cañete for the 2014 United Nations<br />
climate summit. He says that Arias Cañete<br />
made member states feel valued in the<br />
negotiations, has “a very charming style” and<br />
can “be tough when needed”.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Cristina Lobillo Borrero<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Pierre Schellekens<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Yvon Slingenberg<br />
Isaac Valero Ladron<br />
Silvia Bartolini<br />
Gonzalo de Mendoza Asensi<br />
Joachim Balke<br />
Alexandra Marten Carrascosa<br />
Arias Cañete has a healthy national and<br />
gender mix in his cabinet. Cristina<br />
Lobillo Borrero from Spain, his chef de<br />
cabinet, previously served as head of<br />
unit in the <strong>Commission</strong>’s trade<br />
department. Senior adviser Yvon<br />
Slingenberg, from the Netherlands,<br />
previously served as head of unit for ETS<br />
implementation. Isaav Verlo Ladron,<br />
previously the spokesperson for Connie<br />
Hedegaard, the commissioner for<br />
climate action, is Cañete’s<br />
communications adviser.
Dear <strong>Commission</strong>er Arias Cañete,<br />
We wish you every success in your role as European <strong>Commission</strong>er for Climate Action and Energy.<br />
<br />
support the concept of an energy union.<br />
<br />
measures, as well as research, development and the demonstration of low-carbon energy<br />
<br />
competitive prices, and to drive Europe’s economic growth, trigger investment and increase<br />
employment, such an energy union would need to focus on these three priorities:<br />
Energy Market Integration – A well-functioning and coordinated European market<br />
supported by the necessary cross-border infrastructure.<br />
Cooperation – Stronger regional cooperation and solidarity among Member States in<br />
implementing energy policy, delivered through commercial agreements and made easier<br />
by cross-border energy trade.<br />
<br />
of both indigenous production and imports.<br />
At Eurogas we passionately believe that gas has a vital role to play in helping Europe meet<br />
its challenges now and in the future.<br />
In power generation<br />
Gas as a fuel for heating<br />
combination with renewables, by upgrading home and industry heating appliances to modern,<br />
<br />
In transport<br />
rail, inland waterways and maritime transport. Available technology and the increasing network<br />
<br />
quality and the climate.<br />
Eurogas is <strong>full</strong>y committed to help shape an energy union that makes Europe’s energy more<br />
secure, more affordable and more sustainable.<br />
Gertjan Lankhorst,<br />
President of Eurogas<br />
www.eurogas.org<br />
@eurogas_eu<br />
29
COMMISSIONER<br />
Dimitris Avramopoulos<br />
Migration, home affairs and citizenship<br />
Country Greece<br />
Born Athens, 6 June 1953<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@Avramopoulos<br />
If there had been any lingering doubts<br />
about the political sensitivity of the<br />
portfolio awaiting Dimitris<br />
Avramopoulos, the centreright Greek<br />
politician’s parliamentary hearing last<br />
September should have put them to rest. As<br />
MEPs attempted to turn up the heat on the<br />
dapper former mayor of Athens, the three<br />
distinct policy areas of security, legal<br />
migration, and asylumseekers quickly<br />
became a scrambled mess.<br />
While Avramopoulos arguably added to<br />
the confusion with some policy freelancing<br />
about the right to seek asylum at European<br />
embassies, he also appeared to be outlining<br />
what the unwieldy portfolio of migration,<br />
home affairs and citizenship policy<br />
desperately needs: a narrative. “Those<br />
knocking at our door are not potential<br />
terrorists – they are people fleeing dangers<br />
that they know better than us and they ask<br />
for our solidarity,” he told MEPs.<br />
Avramopoulos accepts that he has his<br />
work cut out if he wants the migration<br />
policy objectives outlined by JeanClaude<br />
Juncker to see the light of day. In particular,<br />
he needs to proceed with the planned rootandbranch<br />
reform of the EU’s embryonic<br />
legal migration agreements at a time when<br />
the conversation over migration is being<br />
clouded by issues of security and a growing<br />
asylumseeker emergency in the<br />
Mediterranean.<br />
Avramopoulos was born in Athens but<br />
spent his early years close to his mother’s<br />
home town in Arcadia. The family moved to<br />
Athens where, as a high school student,<br />
Avramopoulos says he suffered a lifechanging<br />
failure. His first attempt to pass<br />
the exams to get into university was<br />
unsuccessful – prompting him to reassess<br />
his life. He then worked <strong>full</strong>time while<br />
studying for university at night. His dayjob<br />
was with the Australian embassy, where<br />
one of his daily tasks was to collect the<br />
diplomatic mailbag from the airport. This is<br />
where Avramopoulos learned to speak<br />
English and he has been told he still has a<br />
slight Australian inflection.<br />
Avramopoulos’s 13year diplomatic career<br />
was that of a man in a hurry. After years of<br />
service he was handpicked to become a<br />
special adviser on foreign policy for Costas<br />
Mitsotakis, the leader of the centreright<br />
New Democracy party. Avramopoulos says<br />
30<br />
that throughout his career, he has never<br />
overthought any decision. “Instinct, in my<br />
eyes, is that power which protects you from<br />
logic,” he says.<br />
It was gutinstinct that led him to quit his<br />
job at the ministry, get himself elected to<br />
parliament and, in 1994, stand for the office<br />
of Athens mayor. Avramopoulos was reelected<br />
with a landslide majority in 1998 –<br />
his second term gave him the political clout<br />
to launch the campaign to bring the Olympic<br />
Games to Athens. As an urbane, multilingual<br />
former diplomat (he speaks French, English<br />
and Italian) he became a high profile<br />
ambassador for the city.<br />
Avramopoulos’s postmayoral career<br />
proved somewhat more controversial. In<br />
2001 he left New Democracy to form his<br />
own party, only to return a year later –<br />
reinforcing a reputation for not forging<br />
lasting alliances. In 2009, he harboured<br />
hopes of becoming New Democracy’s<br />
leader, but was ultimately forced to back<br />
Antonis Samaras. Yet as minister in<br />
successive national governments,<br />
Avramopoulos navigated Greece’s<br />
protracted economic and political crises<br />
effectively, becoming defence minister<br />
in 2011 and foreign minister in 2012<br />
CV<br />
2013-14 Defence minister<br />
2012-13 Foreign minister<br />
2011-12 Defence minister<br />
2010-present Vice-president of New<br />
Democracy party<br />
2006-09 Health and social<br />
solidarity minister<br />
2004-06 Tourism minister<br />
2000-01 President of the Greek Free<br />
Citizens Movement Party<br />
1997-2002 Member of the<br />
Committee of the Regions<br />
1995-2002 Mayor of Athens<br />
1993 Director of the cabinet of Costas<br />
Mitsotakis, then Greece’s prime minister<br />
1980-1993 Greek diplomatic service<br />
1979-80 Postgraduate studies in<br />
international organisation, Boston<br />
University in Brussels<br />
1978 Degree in public law and political<br />
science, Athens University<br />
(before returning to defence).<br />
His appointment as European<br />
commissioner may be the crowning<br />
achievement of a long career – unless, of<br />
course, he finds something to top it.<br />
Chatter out of Athens shortly after the<br />
electoral victory of the farleft Syriza party<br />
in January suggested Avramopoulos was<br />
being considered for the role of Greek<br />
president. The idea of a centreright<br />
politician being appointed to a key role with<br />
the support of a farleft leader would, if<br />
nothing else, be in keeping with<br />
Avramopoulos’s political credo. “Democracy<br />
is the political art of synthesis,” he says. “It<br />
should give concrete results by putting<br />
together different ideologies.”<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Diane Schmitt<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Polykarpos Adamdis<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Kostas Sasmatzoglou<br />
Sofia Asteriadi<br />
Olivier Bergeau<br />
Ilias Papastamatiou<br />
Chrissa Mela<br />
Carine Cloot<br />
Eleni Romaidou<br />
Head of cabinet Diane Schmitt, from<br />
Luxembourg, has spent most of her career<br />
in the <strong>Commission</strong>. Deputy chief of<br />
cabinet Polykarpos Adamidis is a legal<br />
expert from Greece who was directorgeneral<br />
of national defence policy in the<br />
country’s Ministry of Defence. Kostas<br />
Sasmatzoglou, the communications<br />
adviser, served as the EPP's spokesman<br />
and head of the press department in<br />
2004-14. Sofia Asteriadi, the cabinet's<br />
expert from Greece, was the assistant to<br />
Stavros Lambrinidis, a former vicepresident<br />
of the European Parliament.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska<br />
Internal market, industry,<br />
entrepreneurship and SMEs<br />
Country Poland<br />
Born Katowice, 4 February 1964<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@E_Bienkowska<br />
At the age of 29, with a master’s<br />
degree in Iranian studies from<br />
Kraków’s Jagiellonian University and<br />
two small children at home, Elżbieta<br />
Bieńkowska sat the entrance exam for<br />
Poland’s National School of Public<br />
Administration. She passed, but was<br />
eventually turned down when the selection<br />
committee wondered how she could<br />
combine a career with family life. The next<br />
year she was back, and when committee<br />
members repeated their concerns she asked<br />
them if they were putting the same<br />
question to male candidates. They backed<br />
down.<br />
It was the start of a stellar career in<br />
Poland’s public service – a career that<br />
continues to define Bieńkowska’s identity as<br />
European commissioner for internal market,<br />
industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs. As<br />
she has often stressed, she sees herself not<br />
as a politician, but a technocrat, yet few civil<br />
servants could boast Bieńkowska’s<br />
popularity and public recognition. After she<br />
was promoted in a 2013 government<br />
reshuffle, the Polish edition of Newsweek<br />
ran a cover story crowning her “Elżbieta I”.<br />
Bieńkowska has indeed brought<br />
something of the wonkish bureaucrat to her<br />
political career – for example, when she<br />
was minister for regional development in<br />
200713 she developed a reputation as an<br />
effective and meticulous manager of<br />
European Union funds. Then, despite her<br />
professed dislike for the limelight and party<br />
politics, Donald Tusk – then Poland’s prime<br />
minister, now the president of the European<br />
Council – placed Bieńkowska at the centre<br />
of the political cut and thrust by elevating<br />
her to the role of deputy prime minister.<br />
Tusk saw Bieńkowska as an asset for the<br />
government and his party, Civic Platform, as<br />
it strove to improve its poor poll ratings.<br />
Whatever Bieńkowska’s achievements,<br />
gender politics may also have played a part<br />
in Tusk’s decision to name her to join the<br />
college of Europesan commissioners. The<br />
man Tusk had hoped would become the<br />
EU’s foreign policy chief, Radek Sikorski, at<br />
the time Poland’s foreign minister, had<br />
caused concern among member states over<br />
his strong antiRussian rhetoric. The<br />
nomination of a woman then gave Poland<br />
its best chance of securing a highprofile<br />
portfolio, after <strong>Commission</strong> President<br />
JeanClaude Juncker promised to reward<br />
countries that put forward female<br />
candidates.<br />
Juncker also wanted highprofile<br />
nominees and Bieńkowska was certainly<br />
that in Poland. She had been in charge of<br />
Poland’s infrastructure and development<br />
superministry, formed from a departmental<br />
merger announced in a 2013 reshuffle. With<br />
1,600 employees and nine deputy ministers,<br />
it was Poland’s secondlargest department<br />
after the ministry of finance. As minister for<br />
regional development she was also in the<br />
public eye, given that Poland has the largest<br />
allocation of EU funds of any member state.<br />
“Over the past six years Bieńkowska has<br />
accumulated considerable political<br />
experience without making any major<br />
mistakes on policy,” said Wawrzyniec<br />
Smoczynski, director of thinktank Polityka<br />
Insight, last year. “With overexposed male<br />
politicians, it is often the opposite.”<br />
Yet Bieńkowska’s reputation as the<br />
ultimate policy wrangler and manager of<br />
funds was hardearned. Her first public<br />
service job saw her work in the regional<br />
administration in Katowice, in her native<br />
Upper Silesia, where she rose to head the<br />
department responsible for managing EU<br />
funds. In 2007, she was summoned to<br />
Warsaw and offered the position of minister<br />
of regional development as what was<br />
initially meant to be a temporary position to<br />
CV<br />
2013-14 Deputy prime minister and<br />
infrastructure and development minister<br />
2007-13 Regional development minister<br />
1999-2007 Director of regional<br />
development office for Silesia region<br />
1999 MBA, Warsaw School of Economics<br />
1996 Post-graduate diploma from Polish<br />
National School of Public Administration<br />
1988 Master’s degree in oriental<br />
philology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków<br />
sort out the pension system.<br />
In Warsaw, Bieńkowska soon gained a<br />
reputation as an effective manager.<br />
“Colleagues do not implement her decisions<br />
because she tells them to, but because they<br />
are genuinely convinced of their validity,”<br />
says Konrad Niklewicz, a Civic Platform<br />
adviser who served as deputy minister of<br />
regional development under Bieńkowska.<br />
However, there is little to suggest<br />
Bieńkowska’s public persona as a grey civil<br />
servant has much sway over her private life.<br />
She enjoys attending rock concerts and<br />
reportedly once stayed out until 2am,<br />
ahead of a 4.30am flight to attend an<br />
important meeting in Brussels.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Tomasz Husak<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Kristian Hedberg<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Carsten Bermig<br />
Justyna Morek<br />
Fabrice Comptour<br />
Jakub Cebula<br />
Agnieszka Drzewoska<br />
Bien‘kowska’s office is headed by<br />
Tomasz Husak who was Poland’s deputy<br />
permanent representative to the EU. Her<br />
deputy is Kristian Hedberg, a Swede<br />
who used to be head of unit in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s transport department<br />
dealing with land transport.<br />
31
COMMISSIONER<br />
Violeta Bulc<br />
Transport<br />
Country Slovenia<br />
Born Ljubljana, 24 January 1964<br />
Political affiliation ALDE<br />
Twitter<br />
@Bulc_EU<br />
When the European Parliament<br />
rejected Alenka Bratušek, the<br />
former Slovenian prime minister<br />
who had nominated herself to take up a<br />
seat in the college of European<br />
commissioners, many in the small Alpine<br />
country hoped that the job would go to a<br />
capitalP politician who could steer clear of<br />
controversy. What they got instead was<br />
Violeta Bulc, a trained shaman who teaches<br />
firewalking, holds a black belt in<br />
taekwondo and had entered politics less<br />
than a month earlier.<br />
At first glance, Slovenian Prime Minister<br />
Miro Cerar appeared to be thumbing his<br />
nose at both the Parliament and the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, whose president, JeanClaude<br />
Juncker, had asked member states to<br />
nominate highprofile politicians to his<br />
executive. But as Bulc began to meet EU<br />
policymakers it became clear that her<br />
background as a telecoms entrepreneur<br />
from outside politics would be an asset and<br />
there would be no repeat of Bratušek’s<br />
trainwreck of a parliamentary hearing.<br />
Yet in Ljubljana little was known about<br />
Bulc, other than that she had briefly been<br />
deputy prime minister in the unorthodox<br />
Cerar government that had taken office in<br />
September.<br />
“After the hysteria surrounding the<br />
Bratušek bid, the public and the media were<br />
caught offguard by Bulc’s nomination,” says<br />
Andrej Lavtar, a former assistant in the<br />
European Parliament now working in<br />
Slovenian politics. “But they quickly<br />
discovered her newage background”, he<br />
says – and that gave the story a new<br />
narrative.<br />
Bulc was under no illusion that she was<br />
the most popular choice for the<br />
appointment. The main groups in the<br />
European Parliament had been urging Cerar<br />
to put forward one of their own – Slovenian<br />
centreleft MEP Tanja Fajon. But Bulc would<br />
not be cowed, telling European Voice that<br />
she “didn’t feel any warnings from my<br />
subconscious” and accepted Cerar’s<br />
appointment “on the spot”.<br />
Bulc’s unconventional and nonpolitical<br />
background is not atypical of the<br />
government formed by Cerar, a college<br />
professor who came out of nowhere to win<br />
36% of the votes in last July’s general<br />
32<br />
election. He had been part of a network<br />
of citizens from all walks of life –<br />
businesspeople, academics, journalists –<br />
who met regularly to discuss the future of<br />
the country. When Bratušek called a snap<br />
election, Cerar’s supporters saw an<br />
opportunity to put their ideas into practice<br />
– and seized it.<br />
Bulc’s worldview is heavily influenced by<br />
time spent in the Bay area of California.<br />
Born in 1964 in Slovenia, which was at that<br />
time part of Yugoslavia, she became one of<br />
the first group of students to enroll in a new<br />
computer science course in Ljubljana. Her<br />
interest in IT came in handy after her<br />
studies when her thenhusband was<br />
transferred to Silicon Valley. Bulc worked in<br />
the early 1990s for DHL Systems, analysing<br />
the performance of wide area networks and<br />
eventually obtaining a master’s degree from<br />
a local university.<br />
Bulc had expected her <strong>Commission</strong><br />
appointment to be as vicepresident for<br />
energy union, the post that had been<br />
assigned to Bratušek. However, Juncker<br />
decided to switch her to the transport<br />
portfolio and allocated the vicepresidency<br />
to the more experienced Maroš Šefčovič –<br />
taking some of the heat out of Bulc’s<br />
confirmation hearing. As for Bulc’s newage<br />
quirkiness, the media interest did not<br />
CV<br />
2014 Deputy prime minister;<br />
development, strategic projects<br />
and cohesion minister<br />
2013-14 Chief of the Program<br />
Committee, SMC Party<br />
2000-14 CEO of Vibacom Ltd<br />
1999-2000 Vice-president of Telemach<br />
1997-99 Director of carrier business,<br />
Telekom Slovenia<br />
1997-99 Manager of institutional traffic,<br />
Telekom Slovenia<br />
1991-94 Expert for wide area<br />
networks performance analyses, DHL<br />
1991 Master’s degree in information<br />
technology, Golden Gate University, San<br />
Francisco<br />
1988 Degree in computer science and<br />
informatics, University of Ljubljana<br />
resonate in her parliamentary hearing, with<br />
firewalking barely rating a mention.<br />
Yet Bulc’s professional background would<br />
have made the digital agenda portfolio a<br />
better fit. When she returned to Slovenia in<br />
1994, shortly after the country gained<br />
independence, she worked at Telekom<br />
Slovenia, helping to set up the country’s<br />
first competitive telecoms market before<br />
setting up her own telecoms firm,<br />
Telemach, in 1999. However, political<br />
realities dictated that her portfolio would<br />
be transport and, despite her lack of<br />
experience in the sector, she says she is<br />
excited by the prospect. “It’s network logic,<br />
connectivity, service layers, unbundling –<br />
like we were doing in telecoms,” she says.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Marjeta Jager<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Désirée Oen<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Matej Zakonjšek<br />
Damijana Pondelek<br />
Nikolaus Von Peter<br />
Jocelyn Fajardo<br />
Andreja Kodrin<br />
Natasa Vidovic<br />
Bulc’s private office is headed by<br />
Marjeta Jager, a Slovenian who was a<br />
director in the transport department.<br />
Her deputy is Désirée Oen, a Belgian<br />
who was deputy to Siim Kallas and who<br />
used to work for the Alliance of Liberals<br />
and Democrats group in the European<br />
Parliament.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Corina Creţu<br />
Regional policy<br />
Country Romania<br />
Born Bucharest, 24 June 1967<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@CorinaCretuEU<br />
Corina Creţu’s path to the post of<br />
Romania’s European commissioner<br />
began in the unlikely corridors of the<br />
Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Sent<br />
as a journalist to cover a visit to the United<br />
States by Romania’s president, Ion Iliescu,<br />
she managed to collar US President Bill<br />
Clinton. Brushing off the concerns of his<br />
bodyguards, Clinton leaned towards her tape<br />
recorder to declare, in effect, that Romania’s<br />
hopes of integration with the West were in<br />
good hands.<br />
In Romania, the comment dominated the<br />
papers and the airwaves, for this was 1993<br />
and Romania had yet to apply for European<br />
Union membership. Creţu returned to her<br />
normal beat – political and social reporting<br />
– in Bucharest, basking in her modest fame<br />
and the pleasures of a job she would, she<br />
says, have done for free. But then bad luck<br />
struck for a second time. The first time,<br />
aged 14, she had lost an eye, ending her<br />
competitive basketball career. This time,<br />
aged 26, Creţu was hit by a car and spent<br />
months in hospital. It was at this point that<br />
Iliescu’s office turned to her, asking for her<br />
help with media work.<br />
Creţu’s close identification with Iliescu was<br />
soon clear. A journalist recalls her as being<br />
“kind, ready to help in resolving technical<br />
problems, but somehow I always had the<br />
feeling she exceeded her job description in<br />
‘guarding the president’s back’”. Creţu is<br />
certainly adept at identifying the messages<br />
that need countering: in 2012, when asked<br />
to identify the main quality of Romania’s new<br />
prime minister, Victor Ponta, she said<br />
“honesty” – precisely the quality others said<br />
Ponta most lacked.<br />
Romanians commonly describe her as a<br />
good communicator, and she also proved<br />
good at building bridges within the fractious<br />
socialists. She played multiple roles for<br />
Iliescu. She was his scribe (in his media<br />
team), then his voice (as his spokeswoman)<br />
and then his ghostwriter (for his memoirs),<br />
as well as onetime campaign manager. A<br />
US diplomat additionally described her as<br />
Iliescu’s adviser, a notion scoffed at by<br />
Romanians: Iliescu is not a man easily<br />
advised, they laugh.<br />
Creţu parted ways with Iliescu, by then 74<br />
and out of the presidency, when the<br />
socialists, anxious for more women, asked<br />
her to stand as a senator in Bucharest. But<br />
while being a woman helped her enter the<br />
senate in 2004, it might not have helped her<br />
progress, because Romania’s parliament<br />
was and remains crushingly male: in 2012,<br />
just 11.5% of members in the two chambers<br />
were women.<br />
When she realised that Romanians could<br />
join the European Parliament as observers<br />
even before the country’s accession, she<br />
seized the opportunity. One reason, she says,<br />
was that she hankered after a more<br />
international dimension to her work (though<br />
she was on the foreignaffairs committee).<br />
While an early arrival in the Parliament,<br />
she was eclipsed by older compatriots after<br />
Romania’s accession in 2007. Still, Creţu was<br />
one of the few Romanians to secure a good<br />
post, as deputy chairwoman of the<br />
development committee.<br />
By last May, Creţu was top of the<br />
Romanian socialists’ list in the European<br />
Parliament elections. The party’s<br />
overwhelming victory put her in a good<br />
position to become a vicepresident of the<br />
Parliament – which she did. In other<br />
countries, she would also have been seen as<br />
CV<br />
2014 Vice-president of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
2011-present Vice-president of the Social<br />
Democratic Party<br />
2008-10 Board member, parliamentary<br />
network on the World Bank<br />
2007-14 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
2005-06 Vice-president of the Social<br />
Democratic Party<br />
2004-05 Senator, Romanian parliament<br />
2000 Member of the chamber of<br />
deputies, Romanian parliament<br />
2000-04 Presidential adviser,<br />
spokesperson for the Romanian<br />
president, head of the public<br />
communication department<br />
1993-96 Spokespersons office of the<br />
Romanian president<br />
1990-93 Journalist<br />
1989-90 Economist<br />
1985 Degree in economic planning and<br />
cybernetics,, Academy of Economic<br />
Studies, Bucharest<br />
the probable next European commissioner.<br />
Most Romanians, though, thought Dacian<br />
Cioloş, a technocrat nominated by the right,<br />
would remain as agriculture commissioner.<br />
But JeanClaude Juncker, the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
president, urgently needed another<br />
woman.<br />
Creţu mobilised herself to learn about her<br />
dossier – regional policy – before the<br />
parliamentary hearings. She emerged well.<br />
Creţu needs pressure, says one of many<br />
former aides; comfort and spontaneity are<br />
her enemies. In her portfolio she is focusing<br />
on the EU’s poorer, frequently rural areas.<br />
She is emphasising the need for short, clear<br />
messages. She needs to manage<br />
expectations in Romania and, elsewhere, to<br />
counter criticisms of the EU’s spending.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Mikel Landabaso<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Gabriel Onaca<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Ioana Rus<br />
Dragoş Bucurenci<br />
Jan Mikolaj Dzięciołowski<br />
Tomáš Nejdl<br />
Mathieu Fichter<br />
Ioannis Latoudis<br />
Corina Creţu came to office as (more or<br />
less) a newcomer to regional policy. Her<br />
team, by contrast, is packed with people<br />
who have made their careers in regional<br />
development, particularly her Spanish<br />
chef de cabinet, Mikel Landabaso, a<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> specialist in this area since<br />
1990. Her cabinet is, otherwise, drawn<br />
mainly from newer member states.<br />
Romanians, naturally, feature<br />
prominently, reinforcing Creţu’s links to<br />
the government and to the socialist<br />
party.<br />
33
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION 2014-19<br />
Jean-Claude Juncker<br />
President<br />
Frans Timmermans<br />
First vice-president:<br />
Better regulation, interinstitutional<br />
relations, rule of<br />
law and charter of<br />
fundamental rights<br />
Federica Mogherini<br />
Vice-president and<br />
High representative of the<br />
Union for foreign affairs and<br />
security policy<br />
Kristalina Georgieva<br />
Vice-president:<br />
Budget and human resources<br />
Vytenis Andriukaitis<br />
Health and food safety<br />
Miguel Arias Cañete<br />
Climate action<br />
and energy<br />
Dimitris Avramopoulos<br />
Migration, home affairs<br />
and citizenship<br />
Elżbieta Bieńkowska<br />
Internal market,<br />
industry,<br />
entrepreneurship<br />
and SMEs<br />
Violeta Bluc<br />
Transport<br />
Cecilia Malmström<br />
Trade<br />
Neven Mimica<br />
International<br />
co-operation and<br />
development<br />
Carlos Moedas<br />
Research, science and<br />
innovation<br />
Pierre Moscovici<br />
Economic and financial<br />
affairs, taxation<br />
and customs<br />
Tibor Navracsics<br />
Education, culture,<br />
youth and sport<br />
34
Andrus Ansip<br />
Vice-president:<br />
Digital single market<br />
Maroš Šefčovič<br />
Vice-president:<br />
Energy union<br />
Valdis Dombrovskis<br />
Vice-president:<br />
The euro and<br />
social dialogue<br />
Jyrki Katainen<br />
Vice-president:<br />
Jobs, growth, investment and<br />
competitiveness<br />
Corina Creţu<br />
Regional policy<br />
Johannes Hahn<br />
European<br />
neighbourhood policy<br />
and enlargement<br />
negotiations<br />
Jonathan Hill<br />
Financial stability,<br />
financial services and<br />
capital markets union<br />
Phil Hogan<br />
Agriculture and<br />
rural development<br />
Vĕra Jourová<br />
Justice, consumers and<br />
gender equality<br />
Günther Oettinger<br />
Digital economy<br />
and society<br />
Christos Stylianides<br />
Humanitarian aid and<br />
crisis management<br />
Marianne Thyssen<br />
Employment, social<br />
affairs, skills and<br />
labour mobility<br />
Karmenu Vella<br />
Environment, maritime<br />
affairs and fisheries<br />
Margrethe Vestager<br />
Competition<br />
35
COMMISSIONER<br />
Johannes Hahn<br />
European neighbourhood policy<br />
and enlargement negotiations<br />
Country Austria<br />
Born Vienna, 2 December 1957<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@JHahnEU<br />
Johannes Hahn has made a success of<br />
being lowkey. He was an unexpected<br />
choice as Austria’s member of the<br />
college of European commissioners in 2009<br />
(he is only the third Austrian commissioner)<br />
but impressed enough while in charge of<br />
regional policy to be renominated.<br />
There were concerns about his suitability<br />
for the role he now has, as the<br />
commissioner for relations with the<br />
European Union’s neighbours and wouldbe<br />
members. At his parliamentary hearing,<br />
Hahn himself highlighted the principal<br />
questionmark about his suitability: he lacks<br />
“diplomatic” experience, he acknowledged.<br />
He added: “I don’t want to be a bull in a<br />
china shop.” But he gave an accomplished<br />
performance before the European<br />
Parliament’s foreignaffairs committee,<br />
having clearly studied the main issues and<br />
some of the footnotes about the 16<br />
countries in the EU’s neighbourhood and<br />
the eight countries seeking membership of<br />
the EU.<br />
Once confirmed in the role, Hahn said that<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> intends over the next five<br />
years to adopt a “very pragmatic approach”<br />
to wouldbe members of the EU, and that<br />
he wanted to bring some of his experience<br />
from business and from his five years as<br />
commissioner for regional policy into his<br />
new role.<br />
Hahn never expected, let alone planned,<br />
to become a European commissioner. But it<br />
was no accident that his party, the<br />
conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP),<br />
turned to Hahn, given his staunch pro<br />
European credentials. In the 1980s, he<br />
drafted the first European manifesto of the<br />
ÖVP’s youth wing, where he was deputy<br />
leader. Hahn adopted a decidedly pro<br />
European position at a time when many<br />
within the party had doubts about Austria’s<br />
accession to the EU.<br />
Hahn is that rare breed of politician who<br />
does not feel a constant need to talk. He<br />
weighs his words care<strong>full</strong>y and is happy to<br />
remain silent if he believes he has said what<br />
needs to be said. People who know him well<br />
describe him as very sensitive<br />
At university, Hahn discovered that<br />
philosophy suited him far better than law.<br />
His whole outlook on life changed soon<br />
after, however, when, aged 22, he was<br />
36<br />
diagnosed with cancer. “If you are<br />
confronted with death, your priorities<br />
change,” says Hahn.<br />
The illness left Hahn a serene man. That<br />
equanimity has turned out to be an asset.<br />
He made his way in politics without striving<br />
doggedly for the positions he won, in local<br />
and regional government and as the ÖVP’s<br />
regional head. “I have never aspired to any<br />
post 100%, to avoid disappointment if<br />
things did not work out the way I expected,”<br />
he says.<br />
A lack of political calculation may help<br />
explain his decision to work, from 1997 to<br />
2003, for a gambling business, of which he<br />
became chief executive.<br />
Hahn’s lack of pushiness is appreciated by<br />
fellow politicians. But critics say he lacks<br />
decisiveness, pointing, for instance, to his<br />
tenure as minister for science and research.<br />
University officials praised him for engaging<br />
in open dialogue when, on three separate<br />
occasions, students launched major protest<br />
campaigns calling for free, unlimited access<br />
to university education and for a bigger<br />
budget. Others contend that, in one<br />
instance, his long refusal to talk to students<br />
who had staged a sitin at Vienna University<br />
allowed the dispute to fester.<br />
CV<br />
2010-14 European commissioner for<br />
regional policy<br />
2007-10 Science and research minister<br />
2003-07 Member of Vienna regional<br />
government<br />
1997-2003 Board member, then CEO,<br />
Novomatic AG<br />
1996-2003 Member of Vienna regional<br />
parliament<br />
1992-97 Executive director, People’s<br />
Party<br />
1987-89 Secretary-general, Austrian<br />
Managers Association<br />
1987 Doctorate in philosophy, University<br />
of Vienna<br />
In his new role, Hahn will have to become<br />
a diplomat; the EU’s approach to the<br />
neighbourhood cannot simply be<br />
technocratic. The easy manner in which he<br />
handled the foreignaffairs committee<br />
suggested the former municipal politician<br />
will achieve the transition. But a hearing<br />
before the European Parliament is small<br />
beer compared to the burning, and<br />
frequently explosive, problems that await<br />
him.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Michael Karnitschnig<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Emma Udwin<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Hanna Jahns<br />
Kyriacos Charalambous<br />
Colin Scicluna<br />
Christine Grau<br />
David Müller<br />
Michael Karnitschnig, an Austrian who<br />
worked in the private office of José<br />
Manuel Barroso, is head of Hahn’s<br />
private office. Karnitschnig, who comes<br />
from the Austrian foreign ministry, used<br />
to advise Barroso on foreign relations.<br />
Hahn’s deputy is Emma Udwin, a Briton<br />
who worked for him when he was<br />
commissioner for regional policy and<br />
before that for Benita Ferrero-Waldner,<br />
Hahn’s predecessor as Austria’s<br />
European commissioner.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Jonathan Hill<br />
Financial stability, financial services and<br />
capital markets union<br />
Country United Kingdom<br />
Born London, 24 July 1960<br />
Political affiliation ECR<br />
Twitter<br />
@JHillEU<br />
When Lord Hill of Oareford was<br />
revealed as the UK’s choice for<br />
European commissioner in July<br />
2014, the reaction in Brussels came in two<br />
forms. The first was the question: “Lord<br />
Who?” The second was the observation<br />
that, as the appointment of a conservative<br />
government, he would have to be<br />
Eurosceptic.<br />
While the latter claim was quickly put to<br />
rest by those who knew him, the ‘Lord<br />
Who?’ quip did not appear to bother<br />
Jonathan Hill at all. A former ministerial<br />
colleague says he “absolutely does not seek<br />
the limelight” and, as a result, he is<br />
“consistently underestimated.”<br />
Even before British Prime Minister David<br />
Cameron took the unprecedented step of<br />
voting against JeanClaude Juncker’s<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> presidency, it was assumed<br />
that he would send a highprofile former<br />
cabinet minister to the <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
Yet to the astonishment of many, when<br />
Juncker unveiled his college lineup it was<br />
the unflashy Hill who had hit the bullseye:<br />
commissioner for financial stability, financial<br />
services and capital markets union. The<br />
appointment places Hill at the centre of<br />
policy affecting the financial hub of the City<br />
of London – something that would have<br />
been well received at 10 Downing Street.<br />
Hill studied history at Cambridge and was<br />
persuaded to start a PhD. But he felt<br />
unsuited to academic life and returned to<br />
London in 1983, working in a bar, for banker<br />
Jacob Rothschild and as an editor in a<br />
publishing house.<br />
Still restless, Hill was told by a friend who<br />
had worked at the Conservative research<br />
department to apply for a job with the<br />
party’s internal thinktank and, in 1985, his<br />
political career began. He moved to the<br />
employment department as an adviser,<br />
followed by three years at the departments<br />
of industry and health before he quit to<br />
work in the private sector. Two years later<br />
he rejoined the government, this time at<br />
the prime minister’s office – first in its<br />
policy unit, then as political secretary for<br />
the prime minister, John Major.<br />
Hill left government in 1994 and, with the<br />
exception of stints advising Major during<br />
crises in 1995 and 1997, he stayed in the<br />
private sector for 16 years. He and John<br />
Eisenhammer, a former journalist, formed a<br />
communications, advisory and lobbying firm<br />
in 1998. So successful was Quiller<br />
Consultancy that, within a decade, the<br />
partners sold up to PR firm Huntsworth for<br />
€13 million and Hill was looking forward to<br />
spending more time with his wife and<br />
children.<br />
It did not happen. In May 2010, the newly<br />
elected Cameron asked Hill to join his<br />
coalition. He wanted a reforming but<br />
consensusbuilding schools minister to steer<br />
legislation through the House of Lords, the<br />
UK’s upper house of parliament. Hill jumped<br />
at the chance and did such a good job that,<br />
in January 2013, Cameron chose Hill as<br />
leader of the House of Lords, a role in which<br />
he thrived.<br />
When it came time to find his<br />
commissioner, Cameron considered the<br />
political advantages of several candidates.<br />
But, in the end, he decided that there was<br />
one thing he needed – a fixer – and one<br />
thing he did not need – a byelection. Hill,<br />
who as a lord could be replaced by<br />
appointment, was the standout choice.<br />
Since landing the job, Hill has impressed<br />
with his openmindedness toward policy<br />
options as well as his political antennae. It<br />
was those antennae rather than ignorance<br />
that prompted his diplomatic evasion of a<br />
question about ‘eurobonds’ at his first<br />
hearing before MEPs – a politically sensitive<br />
issue outside his remit. He knows these hot<br />
CV<br />
2013-14 Leader of the House of Lords<br />
and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster<br />
2010-13 Under-secretary of state for<br />
education<br />
1998-2010 Director, Quiller Consultants<br />
1994-98 Senior consultant, Bell Pottinger<br />
Communications<br />
1992-94 Political secretary to Prime<br />
Minister John Major<br />
1991-92 Government policy unit<br />
1986-89 Special adviser to Kenneth<br />
Clarke MP<br />
1985-86 Conservative Party research<br />
department<br />
1982 Master’s degree in history, Trinity<br />
College, Cambridge<br />
political questions will keep coming but<br />
understands that his fiveyear term will be<br />
judged not on these ideological dividinglines<br />
but on its success in weaning the EU’s<br />
private sector off excessive reliance on bank<br />
finance and in creating sustainable jobs.<br />
After a much smoother second hearing<br />
before MEPs, the big challenge for Hill will<br />
be to unpick national rules that guarantee<br />
and protect capital markets, without<br />
draining a future capital markets union of<br />
the confidence that it will need to operate<br />
effectively. For all this to be done in time for<br />
it to have any meaningful impact on<br />
Europe’s current economic woes may be<br />
even more of a challenge.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Matthew Baldwin<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Nathalie de Basaldúa<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Denzil Davidson<br />
Chantal Hughes<br />
Sebastian Kuck<br />
Mette Tofdal Grolleman<br />
Lee Foulger<br />
Hill’s private office is headed by Matthew<br />
Baldwin, a British official who was<br />
previously director in the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
transport department dealing with<br />
aviation and international issues and was<br />
earlier number two in the cabinet of<br />
Pascal Lamy. Nathalie de Basaldúa, who<br />
was head of unit for financial stability in<br />
the internal market department and<br />
before that head of unit for auditing, has<br />
previously been in the cabinet of Charlie<br />
McCreevy. Denzil Davidson was an<br />
adviser to the UK’s foreign minister. Hill’s<br />
communications adviser, Chantal Hughes,<br />
who has joint British and French<br />
nationality, was Michel Barnier’s spokesperson<br />
when he was commissioner for the<br />
internal market and services.<br />
37
COMMISSIONER<br />
Phil Hogan<br />
Agriculture and rural development<br />
Country Ireland<br />
Born Kilkenny, 4 July 1960<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@PhilHoganEU<br />
Few politicians set a job at the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> as their longterm goal. But<br />
Phil Hogan, the European commissioner<br />
for agriculture and rural development, is a<br />
rare exception. As long ago as the formation<br />
of Enda Kenny’s Fine Gaelled Irish coalition<br />
government in 2011, ‘Big Phil’ – he clocks in<br />
at 1.96 metres in his socks – put his marker<br />
down for the commissionership.<br />
By the time Kenny had to make a<br />
nomination, Hogan’s departure from Dublin<br />
was desirable. For four years, Hogan had<br />
fronted the government’s most controversial<br />
proposals – water charges and taxes on<br />
households and property. His role was as the<br />
hard face of the government in imposing<br />
water charges, which have triggered some of<br />
the largest street demonstrations in Irish<br />
history.<br />
Hogan is known for throwing himself into<br />
whatever he does and would have<br />
committed himself with gusto to any<br />
portfolio assigned to him by JeanClaude<br />
Juncker. That Juncker chose agriculture and<br />
rural development for Hogan guaranteed his<br />
singleminded attention.<br />
Hogan, 54, was born and raised on the<br />
family farm in rural Kilkenny in southeast<br />
Ireland and briefly ran the business after<br />
graduating from university. He joined<br />
Kilkenny County Council at 22, became its<br />
chairman at 25 and helped set up the local<br />
branch of Young Fine Gael.<br />
An unsuccessful bid for a parliamentary<br />
seat in 1987 was swiftly followed by election<br />
to the senate. Two years later, Hogan was<br />
elected to the lower house (Dáil Éireann) for<br />
Carlow Kilkenny and was appointed to a<br />
string of frontbench jobs as spokesman on<br />
the food industry, consumer affairs, and on<br />
regional affairs and European development.<br />
Early on, he developed a reputation inside<br />
the parliamentary party for loyalty to the<br />
leader. At the time that leader was John<br />
Bruton, who was prime minister in 199497<br />
and went on to head the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s delegation in Washington, DC.<br />
Hogan later showed the same allegiance to<br />
Kenny. After Bruton won the 1994 election,<br />
Hogan took a junior ministerial post in the<br />
department of finance but was in situ for less<br />
than two months.<br />
Despite losing his government job, Hogan’s<br />
reward for his loyalty and obvious political<br />
38<br />
talents was a promotion to the chairmanship<br />
of the Fine Gael parliamentary party at the<br />
age of 35. His six years in this job were his<br />
political education, in which he learned not<br />
just about the party leadership but its<br />
organisation and roots.<br />
After Kenny became Fine Gael leader in<br />
2002, Hogan became his righthand man and<br />
the architect of the party’s rebuilding. He<br />
knew all the branch chairs and councillors,<br />
and was always on the lookout for talented<br />
candidates. This diligently accumulated<br />
knowledge bore fruit at the 2004 European<br />
and local elections. Having done so much to<br />
repair the party, Hogan was unhappy at<br />
being removed as national organiser. But he<br />
continued to stand by Kenny. Nine months<br />
later, Kenny appointed Hogan minister for<br />
the environment, community and local<br />
government.<br />
In July 2011, Hogan set out plans for a €100<br />
annual “household charge” to take effect<br />
from 2012 and then be replaced by a <strong>full</strong><br />
property tax. Hogan then announced the<br />
creation of a new utility, Irish Water, to<br />
oversee the installation of meters and<br />
prepare for the introduction of water charges<br />
CV<br />
2011-14 Environment, community and<br />
local government minister<br />
2010-11 National director of elections for<br />
Fine Gael<br />
2002-07 Director of organisation for Fine<br />
Gael<br />
1998 Chairman of Kilkenny County<br />
Council<br />
1995-2001 Chairman of the Fine Gael<br />
parliamentary group<br />
1994-1995 Minister of state at the<br />
department of finance<br />
1989 Elected of lower house of<br />
parliament<br />
1987-89 Member of upper house of<br />
parliament<br />
1985 Chairman of Kilkenny County<br />
Council<br />
1983 Founded Hogan Campion<br />
auctioneers<br />
1981-83 Managed the family farm<br />
1981 Degree in economics and<br />
geography, University College Cork<br />
– the first local taxes to be introduced since<br />
1977.<br />
Hogan developed a reputation as a<br />
climatechange sceptic after he abandoned<br />
legislation introduced in the dying days of<br />
the last government by the Green Party – a<br />
reputation Hogan has always denied.<br />
Highly rated inside the Irish government,<br />
Hogan’s image with the public is less<br />
favourable, as a result of the taxes and<br />
charges he introduced. But his ability to<br />
focus on a dossier, a sympathy for farmers, a<br />
willingness to navigate bureaucracies and<br />
meet political needs while sticking to an<br />
unpopular line are all virtues in his new role.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Peter Power<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Elisabetta Siracusa<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Dermot Ryan<br />
Shane Sutherland<br />
Tom Tynan<br />
Cristina Rueda-Catry<br />
Carl-Christian Buhr<br />
Kevin Keary<br />
Five out of the eight cabinet members are<br />
Irish, including Hogan’s chef-de-cabinet<br />
Peter Power, who worked for Chris Patten<br />
and Peter Mandelson. The two women<br />
are Italian Elisabetta Siracusa, the deputy<br />
chef, and Spaniard Cristina Rueda-Catry.<br />
The cabinet includes communications<br />
adviser Dermot Ryan, a civil servant from<br />
Ireland’s agriculture department who was<br />
an attaché at Ireland’s permanent<br />
representation to the EU. Tom Tynan<br />
previously worked as an adviser to Ivan<br />
Yates, when he was Ireland’s minister of<br />
agriculture. Shane Sutherland previously<br />
served in the cabinets of Charlie<br />
McCreevy and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.
PESTICIDESAND<br />
SUSTAINABLE<br />
AGRICULTURE<br />
Health<br />
Biodiversity<br />
Water<br />
Food<br />
Our Safe and Sustainable<br />
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to safeguarding farmer<br />
health and protecting<br />
the environment<br />
We work with partners to<br />
promote resource-efficient<br />
agriculture for the benefit of<br />
harvests and biodiversity<br />
Working together with key<br />
European stakeholders<br />
we’re helping to keep<br />
pesticides out of water<br />
We actively address<br />
consumer concerns<br />
about pesticide residues;<br />
Europe’s food has never<br />
been safer or healthier<br />
Pesticides play a vital role in ensuring agricultural<br />
productivity and competitiveness. But our industry<br />
does a lot more than just help farmers put healthy,<br />
high-quality and affordable food on European<br />
tables. With projects in four thematic areas – Food,<br />
Water, Health and Biodiversity – we promote and<br />
encourage the safe and sustainable use of our<br />
technology in countries across Europe. Through<br />
innovation, agricultural productivity can help deliver<br />
benefits to society while protecting the environment,<br />
safeguarding health and promoting biodiversity.<br />
The EU needs regulatory policies that foster rather<br />
than discourage this innovative spirit. Find out how<br />
Europe can ensure its place as a world leader in<br />
innovation and economic, social and environmental<br />
security: www.visionforeurope.eu<br />
www.ecpa.eu<br />
www.twitter.com/cropprotection<br />
www.facebook.com/cropprotection<br />
39
COMMISSIONER<br />
Vĕra Jourová<br />
Justice, consumers and gender equality<br />
Country Czech Republic<br />
Born Třebíč, 18 August 1964<br />
Political affiliation ALDE<br />
Twitter<br />
@VeraJourova<br />
Czech coalition governments have a<br />
record of choosing European<br />
commissioners in slow and messy<br />
ways and producing candidates with a<br />
previously low profile. In 2009, Štefan Füle,<br />
a career diplomat with brief ministerial<br />
experience, emerged from the coalition’s<br />
battles to take a post the Czechs were glad<br />
to have – as commissioner for enlargement<br />
and the neighbourhood policy. In last year’s<br />
battle, the victor was a technocrat with<br />
brief ministerial experience, Věra Jourová.<br />
This time, though, the Czechs did not get a<br />
post they coveted. The disappointment was<br />
aggravated because the Czech government<br />
had offered a candidate seemingly tailormade<br />
to meet their needs and those of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. The <strong>Commission</strong>’s president,<br />
JeanClaude Juncker, needed more women<br />
and the Czechs indeed had put forward a<br />
female candidate. The reward the Czechs<br />
wanted was the regional policy dossier, and<br />
they tried to make Juncker’s choice easy:<br />
Jourová has spent most of her life working<br />
on local and regional issues, first in local<br />
government and latterly as minister for<br />
regional development for eight months.<br />
Instead, the regional portfolio went to<br />
someone with no experience of regional<br />
development, Romania’s Corina Creţu.<br />
Jourová’s compensation was a messy new<br />
dossier, as commissioner for justice,<br />
consumers and gender equality. This<br />
portfolio pushes Jourová out of her comfort<br />
zone and puts her into the tricky position of<br />
answering to three of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
seven vicepresidents.<br />
While this looks very much like a secondtier<br />
position, Jourová’s responsibilities<br />
include some of the most politically<br />
sensitive in the <strong>Commission</strong>. Jourová is<br />
charged with handling reform of the EU’s<br />
dataprotection rules and negotiations on<br />
the EU’s controversial dataprotection<br />
agreement with the United States. It is,<br />
therefore, plausible that Jourová will<br />
emerge as one of the most prominent<br />
commissioners – or it may simply be that<br />
her bosses will take the driving seat.<br />
In this tricky position, Jourová’s success<br />
may hinge on her ability to navigate the<br />
EU’s institutions, her personality, her goals<br />
and the support she can generate.<br />
Jourová’s career has not given her much<br />
40<br />
public exposure – before becoming a<br />
minister in 2014, her most high profile role<br />
had been as deputy minister for regional<br />
development for 15 months in 200406 –<br />
and she remains a relatively unknown<br />
quantity. She does, though, have plenty of<br />
EU experience, which she gained by<br />
managing EU money at home and by<br />
working as a consultant on EUfunded<br />
projects beyond Czech borders, ranging<br />
from Romania (she speaks some Romanian)<br />
to Belarus.<br />
She is also described as personable,<br />
attentive to detail and driven. Some<br />
speculate her drive is fuelled by her<br />
experience of Czech injustice. In 2006, she<br />
was detained for a month on suspicion of<br />
corruption. She was exonerated in 2008<br />
and, in 2014, won damages of about<br />
€98,500. In the meantime, she had gained a<br />
degree in law and entered politics for a new<br />
party that portrays itself as an antiestablishment<br />
and anticorruption<br />
movement.<br />
In practice, the party, ANO, remains the<br />
lengthened shadow of its founder, Andrej<br />
Babiš, a billionaire businessman and media<br />
magnate. Still, some in Prague describe<br />
Jourová – the party’s deputy leader until<br />
joining the <strong>Commission</strong> – as independently<br />
minded and relatively assertive.<br />
She is a person with energy, but it is not<br />
yet clear how she will use it. Support within<br />
CV<br />
2014 Regional development minister<br />
2012 Law degree, Charles University<br />
2006-13 Managing director, Primavera<br />
Consulting Ltd<br />
2006-11 Consultancy work in the<br />
western Balkans<br />
2003-06 Deputy regional development<br />
minister<br />
2001-03 Head of regional development<br />
department, Vysočina region<br />
1995-2000 Secretary and spokesperson<br />
for Třebič Municipal Office<br />
1991 Master’s degree in cultural theory,<br />
Charles University, Prague<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> may also prove critical, as<br />
her natural bases of political support are<br />
weak. In the Council of Ministers, the<br />
Czechs are handicapped by their initial<br />
decision to opt out of the European charter<br />
of fundamental rights and they have<br />
relatively small stakes in her portfolio. In<br />
the European Parliament, ANO is still a<br />
newcomer, and the European group to<br />
which it belongs – the liberals – is small.<br />
Jourová is faced with many challenges,<br />
has limited support behind her and will<br />
have to rely heavily on own abilities. But it<br />
would be a mistake to underrate her.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Renate Nikolay<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Daniel Braun<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Isabelle Pérignon<br />
Eduard Hulicius<br />
Kevin O’Connell<br />
Simona Constantin<br />
Monika Ladmanova<br />
Fittingly, gender equality rules in Vĕra<br />
Jourová’s cabinet, with four women in<br />
her seven-member team. Two members<br />
use<strong>full</strong>y combine substantial experience<br />
in <strong>Commission</strong> cabinets with passports<br />
from big EU states: Renate Nikolay, a<br />
German who heads the cabinet, and<br />
Isabelle Pérignon of France. She has<br />
chosen three Czechs with links to<br />
important constituencies – the Czech<br />
government, the European Parliament,<br />
and civil society – with a previous<br />
colleague, Daniel Braun, as deputy chief<br />
of staff.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Cecilia Malmström<br />
Trade<br />
Country Sweden<br />
Born Stockholm, 16 May 1968<br />
Political affiliation ALDE<br />
Twitter<br />
@MalmstromEU<br />
If Cecilia Malmström is daunted by the<br />
prospect of having to finalise one of the<br />
most farreaching and politically sensitive<br />
trade deals in world history, she was giving<br />
little away at her confirmation hearing late<br />
last year. While the Swedish liberal came<br />
across as a committed freemarketeer, her<br />
calm demeanour and matteroffact analysis<br />
of the rocky road ahead earned her kudos<br />
among members of the European<br />
Parliament.<br />
The polished performance also marked a<br />
stark departure from both the substance<br />
and style of her predecessor as trade<br />
commissioner. As the backlash against<br />
aspects of the proposed trade deal between<br />
the European Union and the United States<br />
rapidly intensified in 2014, Karel De Gucht<br />
appeared on occasion slow to grasp the<br />
job’s political imperatives.<br />
It was a mistake Malmström appeared<br />
determined to avoid. She happily<br />
acknowledged concerns over a controversial<br />
arbitration mechanism that was to be built<br />
in to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment<br />
Partnership (TTIP). Referring to the investorstate<br />
dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS)<br />
as “toxic,” Malmström even suggested the<br />
legal framework under which corporations<br />
could take legal action against governments<br />
may be scrapped altogether. “Will it stay in<br />
[TTIP]?” Malmström said at her hearing. “I<br />
don’t know. Maybe not. But it is too early to<br />
judge…”<br />
The future of the ISDS is now unclear –<br />
the valuable investment component of TTIP<br />
is unlikely to get off the drawingboard<br />
without an arbitration mechanism. But<br />
Malmström’s readiness to put the issue on<br />
the table while also offering MEPs some<br />
soulsearching on the negotiations’ lack of<br />
transparency was enough to signal a new<br />
mindset on trade.<br />
Then again, the pros and cons of TTIP had<br />
all been aired before and Malmström’s<br />
strong CV in Europe made her as qualified a<br />
candidate as any to move the deal forward.<br />
She is a former MEP, a former Swedish<br />
minister for Europe, and was fronting the<br />
hearings on the back of a widely praised<br />
term as the European commissioner for<br />
home affairs. She is also an effective,<br />
multilingual communicator – something that<br />
will come in handy when time comes to sell<br />
TTIP to an often sceptical electorate.<br />
In particular, the 46yearold Malmström’s<br />
strong connection with French culture will<br />
be an asset, with French politicians often<br />
flagbearers for European concerns over<br />
TTIP’s fineprint. Malmström lived in France<br />
between the ages of nine and 12 when her<br />
father worked there for a Swedish<br />
engineering company SKF. She returned to<br />
France when she was 19 to study literature<br />
at the Sorbonne University in Paris.<br />
After returning to her native Gothenburg,<br />
Malmström worked as a psychiatric nurse, a<br />
teacher and a university researcher before<br />
completing her PhD in political science in<br />
1998. Her thesis was, unsurprisingly, on<br />
Europe: regional parties in western Europe,<br />
focusing on Catalonia and northern Italy.<br />
By this time, her political career within the<br />
Liberal People’s Party had taken off. In<br />
1999, she was elected to the European<br />
Parliament on the coattails of the popular<br />
environmental and food safety activist Marit<br />
Paulsen. Malmström took to the Parliament<br />
like a duck to water. Networking came<br />
naturally to the MEP, who is often described<br />
as sociable, cheerful, energetic and with a<br />
sense of humour.<br />
Perhaps the only thing Malmström is<br />
more passionate about than Europe is<br />
penguins. She collects them in almost any<br />
CV<br />
2010-14 European commissioner for<br />
home affairs<br />
2007-10 Vice-president of Folkpartiet<br />
2001-10 Member of Folkpartiet (Swedish<br />
Liberal Party) executive<br />
1999-2006 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
1999-2001 Member of Västra Götaland<br />
regional council<br />
1998-99 Senior lecturer, Gothenburg<br />
University<br />
1998 PhD in political science,<br />
Gothenburg University<br />
1994-98 Vice-chair of Gothenburg<br />
Municipal Immigration Committee<br />
1991-94 Lay assessor at Gothenburg<br />
City Court<br />
form: soft toys, plastic figures,<br />
toothbrushes, chess games and more. Her<br />
twin children, a boy and a girl, join in and<br />
her husband Mikael stoically tolerates the<br />
bird invasion.<br />
She explains her slightly eccentric<br />
fascination with penguins by observing that<br />
they manage to brave a bitterly cold<br />
climate in a barren landscape while being<br />
very social, loyal and monogamous. “But<br />
most of all, they seem to have so much fun<br />
when they go bellysliding down the ice,”<br />
she says.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Maria Åsensius<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Miguel Ceballos Barón<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Christian Burgsmüller<br />
Nele Eichhorn<br />
Cecile Billaux<br />
Jon Nyman<br />
Joakim Larsson<br />
Jolana Mungengová<br />
Catrine Norrgård<br />
Maria Åsenius, a former state secretary<br />
for EU affairs in Sweden who was head<br />
of Malmström’s office when she was<br />
commissioner for home affairs, has<br />
stayed on. Malmström’s deputy, Miguel<br />
Ceballos Baron, was an adviser to<br />
Catherine Ashton when she was the<br />
EU’s foreign policy chief on EU-Asia<br />
relations and trade issues. He also<br />
worked in the economics department of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s trade department.<br />
41
SECRETARIAT-GENERAL<br />
Behind-the-scenes power<br />
The secretariatgeneral of the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> is its central nervous<br />
system. Others might less charitably<br />
describe it as the central intelligence agency<br />
– and would accuse it of spying on the<br />
policy departments.<br />
Such antagonism is a feature of many<br />
organisations: the central core is unloved by<br />
those on the periphery, who resent its<br />
powers of control. But the organisation<br />
could not function without that centre: it is<br />
the secretariatgeneral that coordinates<br />
relations with other EU institutions and the<br />
outside world; it coordinates <strong>Commission</strong><br />
work, to ensure that what is supposed to be<br />
done is executed; it arbitrates between<br />
policy departments when they cannot<br />
agree.<br />
These are enduring functions, expressed<br />
in different forms over the years as<br />
management thinking changes. For<br />
instance, nowadays the secretariatgeneral<br />
draws up the <strong>Commission</strong>’s work<br />
programme; it coordinates the reviews of<br />
impact assessments for proposed<br />
legislation; it compiles a synthesis report<br />
from the annual activity reports of each<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> directorgeneral; it looks after<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s transparency register (run<br />
jointly, with the European Parliament) and it<br />
polices the code of conduct for<br />
commissioners.<br />
But the start of the Juncker <strong>Commission</strong><br />
has created a fresh challenge for the<br />
secretariatgeneral, one that will test its<br />
current structure and resources. Juncker<br />
named seven vicepresidents and to most of<br />
them he assigned overarching policy<br />
responsibilities. So, for example, Andrus<br />
Ansip became vicepresident for the digital<br />
single market, with seven commissioners<br />
reporting to him on a range of different<br />
aspects of the digital economy (see pages<br />
1011). But what Juncker did not do was<br />
give the vicepresidents the resources of<br />
their own departments, such as are enjoyed<br />
by those commissioners reporting to Ansip.<br />
Instead, he said that the secretariatgeneral<br />
would provide the necessary backup and<br />
would assign resources.<br />
Since then, the <strong>Commission</strong> leadership has<br />
let it be known that it intends to move 80<br />
officials to the secretariatgeneral to meet<br />
this increased workload. The staff will be<br />
moved from other departments. These reassignments<br />
come on top of a <strong>Commission</strong><br />
commitment to reduce staff numbers by 1%<br />
per year.<br />
What is not yet clear is whether the<br />
system of vicepresidencies that Juncker<br />
has introduced will take root. It is arguably<br />
the most important innovation in the<br />
organisation of the <strong>Commission</strong> since the<br />
admission of ten new member states in<br />
2004 but there is no guarantee of success.<br />
Whether it succeeds or not will depend a lot<br />
on the secretariatgeneral’s ability to secure<br />
the position of those vicepresidents. If the<br />
secretariatgeneral cannot do so, then<br />
Juncker’s theoretical hierarchy may be<br />
eroded in practice.<br />
Much will also depend on who becomes<br />
the next secretarygeneral. Catherine Day<br />
has held the post since November 2005, but<br />
is expected to retire in the first half of this<br />
year, having seen in the new regime.<br />
Juncker and Martin Selmayr, the head of his<br />
private office, will know the importance of<br />
their choice. Day became indispensable to<br />
José Manuel Barroso’s administration, to<br />
the extent that the guidelines on rotating<br />
CATHERINE DAY AND JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER<br />
senior managers were ignored in her case<br />
and she has held the post for more than<br />
nine years. Juncker and Selmayr will<br />
similarly need a secretarygeneral who can<br />
work the <strong>Commission</strong> machinery so as to<br />
deliver on their wishes.<br />
Luis Romero Requena, currently the head<br />
of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s legal service, must be<br />
considered one of the frontrunners. Michel<br />
Servoz, the directorgeneral for<br />
employment, is also talked about.<br />
Alexander Italianer, the directorgeneral for<br />
competition, is another contender, having<br />
previously – like Servoz – been a deputy<br />
secretarygeneral. His caution might count<br />
against him, however, with Juncker and<br />
Selmayr preferring someone more<br />
adventurous. Their style is to conjure up<br />
surprises.<br />
42
COMMISSIONER<br />
Neven Mimica<br />
International co-operation<br />
and development<br />
Country Croatia<br />
Born Split, 12 October 1953<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@MimicaEU<br />
Croatia’s Prime Minister Zoran<br />
Milanović surprised no one when he<br />
nominated Neven Mimica as his<br />
country’s first European commissioner in<br />
2013 – after all, the 59yearold had been at<br />
the heart of Croatia’s efforts to join the<br />
European Union for longer than any of his<br />
fellow countrymen. In 2001, Mimica had<br />
been the chief negotiator on the<br />
stabilisation and association agreement<br />
(SAA), the first contractual step towards EU<br />
membership.<br />
As EU integration minister, Mimica<br />
presided over Croatia’s application for<br />
candidacy in 2003. Finally, as a deputy<br />
prime minister whose portfolio included<br />
Europe, he saw Croatia enter the EU in<br />
2013.<br />
Mimica’s appointment says a lot about<br />
Milanović’s commitment to the EU agenda –<br />
by sending him to Brussels, Milanović was<br />
depriving himself of a trusted collaborator.<br />
In Croatia’s political landscape, Mimica was<br />
never a party animal and can be better<br />
described as a technocrat with policy<br />
expertise in the areas of public<br />
administration and trade. And, while<br />
remaining loyal to Milanović and his Social<br />
Democratic Party (SDP), Mimica is widely<br />
seen as autonomous, with his authority<br />
rooted in his expertise and integrity rather<br />
than in a party power base.<br />
Yet his technocratic public persona comes<br />
at a cost. A 2012 poll found that a third of<br />
Croats had either never heard of, or were<br />
barely familiar with, Mimica’s name. Of<br />
those who knew him, an almost equal<br />
percentage of the opposition and the<br />
governing SDP voters approved of his work.<br />
This is perhaps not surprising for a man who<br />
has held important yet often technical roles<br />
since graduating from Zagreb University as a<br />
foreign trade economist.<br />
The Daily Mail, a British newspaper,<br />
greeted Mimica’s appointment as<br />
commissioner as a case of a former<br />
communist apparatchik now “telling us all<br />
what to do”. It is true that in the late 1970s<br />
and through the 1980s, Mimica – a son of<br />
primaryschool teachers – worked in<br />
positions available only to party members.<br />
None, though, was a leading ideological job;<br />
rather, they were positions requiring<br />
expertise for which party membership<br />
served as a sort of basic security clearance.<br />
After university, the multilingual Mimica<br />
first worked for Astra, an exportimport<br />
entity charged with handling key trade deals<br />
for the state. He was then a government<br />
specialist on trade and foreign relations and,<br />
between 1987 and 1991, he was a trade<br />
diplomat in Yugoslavia’s embassy in Egypt.<br />
The most controversial period of Mimica’s<br />
life was the postindependence decade of<br />
autocratic rule by President Franjo Tudjman.<br />
Mimica served the Tudjman regime largely<br />
in expert roles with little political reach: he<br />
was a government trade specialist who<br />
served stints as a diplomat in Cairo and<br />
Ankara, before taking his first nominally<br />
political role in 1997, as assistant minister<br />
for foreign economic relations. After<br />
Tudjman’s death in 1999, Mimica remained<br />
in demand. In a universe populated by<br />
forceful nationalists and early capitalists<br />
intent on the plunder of public property,<br />
Mimica featured in no public controversy.<br />
Mimica led talks with the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> on trade issues affecting<br />
Croatian exports and jobs, while also taking<br />
on a role as regional advocate. He argued<br />
that Croatia’s EU integration would be<br />
complete only once the whole of the<br />
CV<br />
2013-14 European commissioner for<br />
consumer policy<br />
2011-13 Deputy prime minister for<br />
internal, foreign and European policy<br />
2008-11 Deputy speaker of parliament;<br />
chair of European Integration Committee<br />
2004-08 Member of parliament<br />
2001-03 European integration minister<br />
1997-2001 Assistant minister, then<br />
deputy minister, for the economy, and<br />
chief negotiatior in talks with World<br />
Trade Organization<br />
1987-97 Diplomat for Yugoslavia, then<br />
Croatia<br />
1987 Master’s degree in economics,<br />
University of Zagreb<br />
1983-87 Assistant chairman of<br />
committee for foreign relations<br />
1978-83 Member of, then adviser to,<br />
committee for foreign relations<br />
1977-78 Import-export clerk, Astra<br />
Balkans was in the EU and pledging that,<br />
once a member, Croatia would never use a<br />
bilateral issue to block a neighbour’s<br />
progress.<br />
While the image of the boring technocrat<br />
is not easy to shake, Mimica’s interlocutors<br />
regularly describe him as serious,<br />
convincing and credible.<br />
Though ambitious, Mimica is free from any<br />
delusions about his own political appeal. He<br />
is also cautious. In 2009, he was frequently<br />
mentioned as a potential candidate for his<br />
country’s presidency, yet he decided to<br />
withdraw, reportedly after concluding that he<br />
lacked the required public profile. A<br />
successful stint in Brussels as the most visible<br />
Croat in Europe could yet change that.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Nils Behrndt<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Irena Andrassy<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Maud Arnould<br />
Maria-Myrto Kanellopoulou<br />
Denis Čajo<br />
Paolo Berizzi<br />
Ivan Prusina<br />
Mimica’s head of office is Nils Behrndt,<br />
a German official who did the same job<br />
when Mimica was responsible for<br />
consumer policy. Behrndt is a<br />
pharmaceuticals expert who used to be<br />
in the enterprise and industry<br />
department. Maud Arnold, a French<br />
official, worked in the private office of<br />
Andris Piebalgs when he was<br />
commissioner for development.<br />
43
COMMISSIONER<br />
Carlos Moedas<br />
Research, science and innovation<br />
Country Portugal<br />
Born Beja, 10 August 1970<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@Moedas<br />
As a former investment banker with<br />
Goldman Sachs, Carlos Moedas<br />
knows how to sell. That skill was<br />
evident in September 2014 during his<br />
hearing to become European commissioner<br />
for research, science and innovation, when<br />
the Portuguese politician sold a European<br />
Union narrative to die for.<br />
Moedas opened the session with an<br />
emotive account of his European trajectory:<br />
from his childhood in a poor region<br />
transformed as a result of EU solidarity<br />
funds to his wedding in Paris and the birth<br />
of two of his three children in London. He<br />
spoke in Portuguese, English and French,<br />
which he learnt as one of the first<br />
Portuguese students to undertake an<br />
Erasmus exchange, which in his case took<br />
him to Paris.<br />
That emblematic European path through<br />
life earned Moedas warm applause at the<br />
end of the hearing. The only real naysayers<br />
seemed to be Portuguese MEPs from the<br />
left and hardleft, who denounced him in<br />
harsh terms.<br />
They recalled his role in implementing the<br />
tough austerity conditions attached to the<br />
€78 billion bailout given to Portugal in<br />
2011. Indeed, at the time Moedas was the<br />
minister in Pedro Passos Coelho’s centreright<br />
government with responsibility for<br />
negotiating and implementing the bailout.<br />
But while that was seen as a blackmark<br />
against his name by some politicians, he<br />
presented the experience as good<br />
preparation for managing and administering<br />
the EU’s research budget, which totals some<br />
€80bn for 201420.<br />
The European <strong>Commission</strong> of president<br />
JeanClaude Juncker has said that the<br />
money must go further than it has in the<br />
past, in particular by making more loans and<br />
investments rather than allocating outright<br />
grants. The commissioner must also ensure<br />
that the EU’s money goes to the right<br />
projects to kickstart a European economy<br />
that is increasingly falling behind in terms of<br />
innovation and research.<br />
Moedas appears remarkably wellequipped<br />
to tackle both of those points. He<br />
holds an MBA from Harvard Business School<br />
and studied engineering at the prestigious<br />
French university École Nationale des Ponts<br />
44<br />
et Chaussées. He has firsthand experience<br />
of complex financial engineering, having<br />
worked at Goldman Sachs and for Deutsche<br />
Bank, where he helped create Eurohypo, a<br />
€200bn real estate monster. He also set up<br />
a ‘business angel’ fund in Portugal to invest<br />
in startups.<br />
Moedas, the son of a communist<br />
journalist and a seamstress, came to politics<br />
late via António Borges, a Goldman Sachs<br />
vicepresident who was wellconnected in<br />
Portugal’s centreright Social Democrat<br />
Party. In 2010, Moedas became chief<br />
economic adviser to Passos Coelho, at the<br />
time the new leader of Portugal’s centreright<br />
opposition. Passos Coelho, a former<br />
youth president, management consultant<br />
and an archfreemarketeer, was elected<br />
the following year.<br />
Moedas played a crucial role in<br />
implementing the international bailout that<br />
the new government negotiated. Portugal<br />
broke up cosy oligopolies in the telecoms<br />
and energy sectors and introduced labour<br />
reforms that helped boost exports. But it<br />
also privatised some health services, which<br />
CV<br />
2011-14 Secretary of state to the prime<br />
minister<br />
2011 Member of parliament<br />
2010-11 Senior economic adviser to the<br />
Social Democratic Party<br />
2008-11 Founded and worked at Crimson<br />
Investment Management<br />
2004-08 Managing director and board<br />
member of Aguirre Newman<br />
2002-04 Consultant, Deutsche Bank and<br />
Eurohypo Investment Bank<br />
2000-02 Investment banking associate,<br />
Goldman Sachs<br />
1998-2000 MBA, Harvard Business<br />
School<br />
1993-98 Engineer and project manager,<br />
Suez Group<br />
1988-93 Degree in civil engineering,<br />
Instituto Superior Técnico de Lisboa<br />
proved controversial, and failed to reduce<br />
an unemployment rate that has hovered<br />
around 15% since the 2008 crisis.<br />
Despite the huge pressure on the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> to boost growth in the EU,<br />
Moedas’s current job is unlikely to prove as<br />
controversial as his last.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
António Vicente<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Giulia Del Brenna<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Maria Da Graça Carvahlo<br />
Vygandas Jankunas<br />
Alfredo Sousa<br />
José Mendes Bota<br />
Eveline Lecoq<br />
António Vicente, head of cabinet,<br />
worked as chief of staff to Moedas<br />
when he was Portugal’s secretary of<br />
state in 2011-14. Moedas’s deputy head<br />
of cabinet, Giulia Del Brenna, an Italian,<br />
has been working for the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> since 1996. Her experience<br />
has been mainly in pharmaceuticals.<br />
An interesting addition to the team is<br />
former centre-left MEP Maria da Graça<br />
Carvalho (2009-14) who was a member<br />
of the European Parliament’s committee<br />
on industry, research and energy. She<br />
was a minister for science and higher<br />
education twice (2002-04, when José<br />
Manuel Barroso was Portugal’s prime<br />
minister, and 2004-05) but will now<br />
work as Moedas’s senior adviser.
INNOVATION FOR GROWTH<br />
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DARE TO DISCOVER<br />
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COMMISSIONER<br />
Pierre Moscovici<br />
Economic and financial affairs, taxation and<br />
customs<br />
Country France<br />
Born Paris, 16 September 1957<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@pierremoscovici<br />
The last two questions at the hearing of<br />
Pierre Moscovici, the French<br />
commissionerdesignate for economic<br />
and financial affairs, taxation and customs<br />
union, summed up how the whole process<br />
had gone. Gunnar Hökmark, a Swedish<br />
centreright MEP, noted that when Moscovici<br />
was France’s finance minister he had<br />
increased public spending and lowered the<br />
retirement age. “Are you today a different<br />
Moscovici?” The next question, from Dutch<br />
Liberal MEP Sophie in ’t Veld, began with<br />
these damning words: “It is not about you<br />
being French, but about your political<br />
convictions...”<br />
Moscovici’s track record as France’s finance<br />
minister from 201214, when the country<br />
needed an extension from the European<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> to comply with European Union<br />
budget rules, will hang over Moscovici’s time<br />
as commissioner. However, if the MEPs had<br />
hoped to force Moscovici to recant his biggovernment<br />
approach they were<br />
disappointed. “France has not broken the<br />
rules,” he said. “Everything was done within<br />
the rules.” He also refused to turn his back<br />
on his time as finance minister, responding<br />
to Hökmark that he had no mixed loyalties<br />
and that as commissioner he would apply<br />
“only the rules, nothing but the rules”.<br />
That commitment to the growth and<br />
stability pact, which places a rigid cap on<br />
public spending at 3% of gross domestic<br />
product, would have been anathema to the<br />
young Moscovici, who until the age of 27 was<br />
a member of the Revolutionary Communist<br />
League, led by the Trotskyist Alain Krivine.<br />
He took his first steps towards the French<br />
Socialist party in 1986, under the influence of<br />
Dominique Strauss Kahn, his economics<br />
professor at the École Normale<br />
d’Administration (ENA). That political<br />
relationship lasted up until 2011, with<br />
Moscovici backing Strauss Kahn’s bid to be<br />
the Socialist candidate for France’s<br />
presidential elections until the latter was<br />
accused (and later acquitted) of rape.<br />
Yet during the 1990s Moscovici was more<br />
closely associated with another titan of the<br />
Socialist Party: Lionel Jospin, France’s prime<br />
minister from 19972002. He had stood<br />
behind Jospin as he tried to distance the<br />
party from a wave of scandals that had<br />
engulfed it during François Mitterand’s<br />
46<br />
presidency in the late 1980s. Jospin rewarded<br />
Moscovici by making him his European affairs<br />
minister in 1997, when Moscovici resigned<br />
from the European Parliament to win a seat<br />
in the national parliament representing a<br />
constituency in the FrancheComté in the<br />
east of France.<br />
The two were close. Moscovici was, for<br />
example, one of only two government<br />
ministers to be invited to Jospin’s 60th<br />
birthday party. But the relationship suffered<br />
in 2006 when Moscovici backed Strauss Kahn<br />
over his former boss to be the Socialist<br />
Party’s presidential candidate.<br />
Those familiar with Moscovici and his<br />
career will not have been surprised by his<br />
opening phrase at his European Parliament<br />
hearing: “Europe is the great epic of our<br />
century.” Indeed, Moscovici has always had a<br />
particular passion for Europe and has been a<br />
staunch defender of the European project.<br />
Moscovici, a fluent Englishspeaker, went<br />
on to serve as an MEP for a second time,<br />
becoming vicepresident of the European<br />
Parliament from 200407 and president of<br />
France’s European Movement.<br />
Moscovici comes from a family of<br />
immigrant intellectuals: his mother was<br />
CV<br />
2014 Member of National Assembly<br />
2012-14 Economy and finance minister<br />
2008-14 City councillor, Valentigney<br />
2008-12 President of the Pays de<br />
Montbéliard Agglomération<br />
2007-12 Member of National Assembly<br />
2004-07 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
2002-04 Member of the court of<br />
auditors<br />
1998-2004 Member of Franche-Comté<br />
regional council<br />
1997-2000 Minister-delegate with<br />
responsibility for European affairs<br />
1994-2002 Member of general council,<br />
Doubs department<br />
1994-97 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
1984-88 Member of the court of auditors<br />
1982-84 Ecole Nationale<br />
d'Administration<br />
1978 Master’s degree in economics and<br />
political science, Sciences Po<br />
psychoanalyst while his father was a wellknown<br />
social psychologist and founder of<br />
France’s Green movement. Moscovici’s<br />
ascension through the ranks of the Parisian<br />
ruling elite is a textbook example of how to<br />
succeed in French politics. He graduated<br />
from ENA four years after François Hollande,<br />
France’s president; some three decades later<br />
he led Hollande’s election campaign and<br />
became his economy and finance minister.<br />
Like other such technocrats, unmarried<br />
Moscovici has a reputation for being brainy<br />
and aloof. While that may not matter so<br />
much among Brussels’ eurocratic elites, his<br />
nationality and ties with the profligacy of the<br />
French state may well weigh him down.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Olivier Bailly<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Reinhard Felke<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Maria Elena Scoppio<br />
Simon O’Connor<br />
Fabien Dell<br />
Ioana Diaconescu<br />
Chloé Dessaint<br />
Malgorzata Iskra<br />
Moscovici’s head of cabinet, Olivier Bailly,<br />
joined the <strong>Commission</strong> in 2001, and<br />
within four years was assistant to<br />
Catherine Day, the <strong>Commission</strong>’s<br />
secretary-general. He became one of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s most recognisable faces in<br />
2010 when he was made a senior<br />
spokesperson for the second Barroso<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>. The deputy head of cabinet<br />
is Reinhard Felke, a German who has<br />
been at the <strong>Commission</strong> since 2000,<br />
mostly in the department for economic<br />
and financial affairs. He was a director for<br />
economic and monetary affairs, a subject<br />
that will dominate Moscovici’s time as<br />
commissioner.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Tibor Navracsics<br />
Education, culture, youth and sport<br />
Country Hungary<br />
Born Veszprém, 13 June 1966<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@TNavracsicsEU<br />
Tibor Navracsics was rewarded for his<br />
loyalty to Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s<br />
prime minister, by being nominated<br />
as European commissioner. But it was that<br />
same loyalty that led to him facing an<br />
uncomfortable time in his confirmation<br />
hearing before the European Parliament.<br />
Hungary has had more runins with the<br />
European Union and Europe’s human<br />
rights watchdogs than any other EU state<br />
in recent years. Navracsics has been a<br />
leading light in Hungary’s ruling centreright<br />
Fidesz party; and, until the past year<br />
or so, he was Orbán’s righthand man as<br />
the chief of staff, the justice minister and<br />
latterly the foreign minister and deputy<br />
prime minister.<br />
Navracsics had a swift rise through the<br />
ranks of the Fidesz party, which he joined<br />
in 1994. He was brought into the party to<br />
help identify the causes of the party’s<br />
unexpected rout in the 1994 elections.<br />
When Orbán took office in 1998, the young<br />
political scientist became the prime<br />
minister’s press chief. After Fidesz<br />
unexpectedly lost the 2002 elections, his<br />
unflappable, methodical style made him<br />
the natural choice to analyse the causes of<br />
Fidesz’s defeat, and Orbán made him his<br />
chief of staff. When Fidesz once again lost,<br />
unexpectedly, to a resurgent Socialist Party<br />
in 2006, he was made head of Fidesz’s<br />
parliamentary group, becoming the face of<br />
the party during its increasingly rancorous<br />
campaign against Ferenc Gyurcsány’s<br />
Socialist government.<br />
“In 2006, I was the only one who wanted<br />
the job,” he recalls of the moment of<br />
gloom for a party that had, once again,<br />
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.<br />
That willingness to step into the breach<br />
turned Navracsics from a backroom player<br />
into a politician with a national profile.<br />
The son of a teacher and a librarian,<br />
Navracsics was born in the western city of<br />
Veszprém in 1966.<br />
A selfprofessed moderate, he attributes<br />
a care<strong>full</strong>y cultivated nonconfrontational<br />
style and his belief in a “civic Hungary with<br />
a strong middle class and market<br />
economy” to the influence of his staid but<br />
pretty hometown, an ancient and<br />
prosperous city near the shores of Lake<br />
Balaton. “Western Hungary has always<br />
been less radical than the east,” he says.<br />
It was while studying law in Budapest in<br />
the late 1980s that he first came into<br />
contact with Orbán and Fidesz. “It was<br />
partly a generational thing, and that they<br />
were from the provinces too. They were<br />
the most appealing party for me at the<br />
time,” he says. “But they were doing very<br />
well without me, and I didn’t think I had<br />
anything extra to bring to the table.”<br />
Already a politics junkie, he busied<br />
himself sampling the many new political<br />
groupings that were emerging during the<br />
“exciting time of the regime change”.<br />
Acquaintances from that era remember<br />
him leafleting enthusiastically for a<br />
Trotskyite cell, though he says it was just<br />
one of many different political groupings at<br />
the time.<br />
He was briefly a judge, but soon returned<br />
to teach political science in Budapest,<br />
spending a year at the UK’s University of<br />
Sussex in what he describes as a formative<br />
encounter with AngloSaxon political<br />
thinking.<br />
He is widely regarded as a wellbriefed<br />
technocrat, able to prepare himself for a<br />
meeting during a short car journey. His<br />
excellent English and businesslike tones<br />
CV<br />
2014 Foreign affairs and trade minister<br />
2010-14 Deputy prime minister, public<br />
administration and justice minister<br />
2006-10 Member of parliament<br />
1998-2002 Head of department, prime<br />
minister’s office<br />
1999 Associate professor, ELTE<br />
1999 Doctorate in political science<br />
1997-2000 Secretary-general, Hungarian<br />
Political Science Association<br />
1997-99 Senior lecturer, faculty of law<br />
and political science, ELTE<br />
1990 Law degree, Eötvös Loránd<br />
University (ELTE), Budapest<br />
have made him popular abroad – but he<br />
showed a more pugnacious side as<br />
parliamentary leader, with many of the<br />
attacks on Gyurcsány absurdly personal<br />
and bitter.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Jonathan Hill<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Adrienn Király<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Christine Mai<br />
Patricia Reilly<br />
Rodrigo Ballester<br />
Anna Georgina Isola<br />
Tamás Szokira<br />
Szabolcs Horváth<br />
Navracsics’s head of office is Jonathan<br />
Hill, a British official who was deputy<br />
head of office to Androulla Vassiliou<br />
when she was commissioner for<br />
education, culture, youth and sport.<br />
Navracsics’s deputy is Adrienn Kiraly, a<br />
Hungarian official who used to work in<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s justice department.<br />
Patricia Reilly, an Irish official, used to<br />
work in the office of Máire Geoghegan-<br />
Quinn, the commissioner for research,<br />
innovation and science.<br />
47
COMMISSIONER<br />
Günther Oettinger<br />
Digital economy and society<br />
Country Germany<br />
Born Stuttgart, 15 October 1953<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@GOettingerEU<br />
When Günther Oettinger’s October<br />
2014 parliamentary hearing made<br />
international headlines, it was for<br />
all the wrong reasons. The German<br />
politician, who had previously described<br />
himself as “not happy, but satisfied” to<br />
receive the digital agenda portfolio, scoffed<br />
at celebrities who had been “dumb” enough<br />
to allow nude photos of themselves to<br />
appear online.<br />
It was a tonedeaf comment, but also one<br />
which revealed a misunderstanding of what<br />
had happened. The Hollywood actors<br />
concerned had not posted photographs of<br />
themselves online but had had their iCloud<br />
accounts hacked, and Oettinger’s struggle<br />
to get his head around what was the big<br />
technological talkingpoint of the day<br />
dismayed those expecting him to take a<br />
stand on internet security.<br />
So it was that while Oettinger was able to<br />
limp through the hearing, his appointment<br />
pleased noone. Advocates of digital rights<br />
and intellectual property advocates were<br />
unhappy that a key role in formulating<br />
digital policy had gone to someone from<br />
Germany, a country which had resisted<br />
expanding access to online content.<br />
Meanwhile the German media thought the<br />
post was unimportant and one which did<br />
not reflect Germany’s leading economic<br />
position in the European Union.<br />
Missteps in the confirmation hearing<br />
simply added to the sense that this was a<br />
portfolio misfit. The 61yearold Oettinger,<br />
who had been commissioner for energy in<br />
the second Barroso <strong>Commission</strong>, was then<br />
derided in German and British media when,<br />
while defending his suitability for the job,<br />
he asserted that he used the internet every<br />
day (it seemed unlikely).<br />
Many in the energy sector would have<br />
preferred to see Oettinger, who had been<br />
commissioner for energy in the second<br />
Barroso <strong>Commission</strong>, become the vicepresident<br />
for energy. Indeed this was also<br />
believed to be the ambition of Oettinger<br />
himself. However, for JeanClaude Juncker,<br />
the president of the <strong>Commission</strong>, to award<br />
a vicepresidency to Germany and not to<br />
France or the UK could have proven<br />
politically unpalatable.<br />
Yet Oettinger had been a steady<br />
performer as energy commissioner, deftly<br />
48<br />
handling difficult negotiations with the EU’s<br />
partners and acting as a industryfriendly<br />
check on the more ambitious climatechange<br />
policies put forward by then<br />
commissioner for climate action, Connie<br />
Hedegaard. It is worth remembering that<br />
Oettinger’s 2009 appointment as energy<br />
commissioner had also been greeted with<br />
little enthusiasm. On that occasion, his<br />
public standing had been undermined by<br />
the discovery that he had been Chancellor<br />
Angela Merkel’s third choice for the role.<br />
At the time, Oettinger had spent his entire<br />
life in his home state of Baden<br />
Württemberg and it had been suggested<br />
that Merkel’s decision to send him to<br />
Brussels was her way of getting rid of a<br />
political rival. Other criticisms came from<br />
outside Oettinger’s and Merkel’s camp.<br />
“Who is he?”, asked Guy Verhofstadt, now<br />
the leader of the Liberal (ALDE) group in the<br />
European Parliament.<br />
The attacks by rivals were perhaps<br />
predictable, but the more general lack of<br />
respect for Oettinger might seem peculiar<br />
to outsiders. Oettinger is, after all, a man<br />
who, as ministerpresident of Baden<br />
Württemberg in 200509, presided over a<br />
land more populous than Sweden and one<br />
of Germany’s most economically important<br />
Länder.<br />
Part of the dismissive attitude is regional<br />
prejudice. Despite its wealth, the heavy<br />
regional accent of BadenWürttemberg,<br />
Schwäbish, leaves many struggling to avoid<br />
being dismissed as bumpkins. However,<br />
Oettinger’s public persona has not helped<br />
CV<br />
2010-14 European commissioner for<br />
energy<br />
2005-10 Minister-president of Baden-<br />
Württemberg<br />
1984-2010 Member of the state<br />
parliament of Baden-Württemberg<br />
1984-2005 Lawyer<br />
1980-84 Town councillor, Ditzingen<br />
1971-82 Law degree, Tübingen University<br />
him: he has never looked at ease on<br />
occasions that most regional politicians<br />
would savour.<br />
In his first term as a commissioner,<br />
Oettinger did little to dispel the impression<br />
of being cold and aloof. He was never a<br />
favourite among the Brussels press pack<br />
and was prone to gaffes and an appearance<br />
of irritability. But he was always viewed as<br />
highly competent and resultoriented,<br />
showing an impressive command of all<br />
questions related to energy. While digital<br />
issues may not have been his forte at the<br />
October hearing, Oettinger may yet again<br />
surprise those who underestimate him.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Michael Hager<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Eric Mamer<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Bodo Lehmann<br />
Paula Pinho<br />
Markus Schulte<br />
Marlene Holzner<br />
Anna Herold<br />
Oettinger has kept on many of the<br />
members of his private office from his<br />
term as <strong>Commission</strong>er for energy<br />
including Michael Hager, a German who<br />
continues as head of office, and Eric<br />
Mamer, a French official formerly in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s budget department, who<br />
continues as Oettinger’s deputy. Bodo<br />
Lehmann (German), Paula Pinho<br />
(Portuguese) and Markus Schulte<br />
(German) were previously in Oettinger’s<br />
team. Marlene Holzner, his<br />
communications adviser, was<br />
Oettinger’s spokesperson during his first<br />
term.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Christos Stylianides<br />
Humanitarian aid and crisis management<br />
Country Cyprus<br />
Born Nicosia, 26 June 1958<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@StylianidesEU<br />
The importance of the role of European<br />
commissioner for humanitarian aid<br />
and crisis management hinges on one<br />
important factor: the scale of the crisis, or<br />
crises, that need to be tackled.<br />
And there was no easy start for Christos<br />
Stylianides. National leaders named him the<br />
EU’s Ebola coordinator, as the disease<br />
spread at an alarming rate across west<br />
Africa. One of his first tasks after taking<br />
office was to visit the three countries most<br />
affected by Ebola – Guinea, Liberia and<br />
Sierra Leone. “Ebola should be addressed<br />
like a mega natural disaster – it is like a<br />
typhoon in slow motion,” he told the<br />
members of the European Parliament’s<br />
development committee. “It is also a threat<br />
to global security… behind the worrying<br />
statistics of [its] devastating spread … are<br />
real human lives, people and communities<br />
that will also need psychosocial assistance<br />
after recovery.”<br />
In the battle against the virus, aides say<br />
his priority will be getting more medical<br />
professionals to the frontlines to deal with<br />
the pandemic.<br />
Stylianides was certainly not daunted by<br />
the task ahead of him. That the former<br />
dental surgeon had also tasted crisis in<br />
his native Cyprus – witnessing, first hand,<br />
Greek and Turkish Cypriots caught up in the<br />
war – reinforced his conviction that he was<br />
the right man for the post. At his hearing<br />
before the Parliament, he said: “I know<br />
what it means to be in a conflict situation,<br />
to have no shelter, to be without the basic<br />
needs, to live in fear and be stripped of your<br />
dignity.”<br />
The son of a shopkeeper, Stylianides grew<br />
up in Nicosia’s old walled city. He had a<br />
frontrow view of the strife that would<br />
erupt in 1974 when, in response to a coup<br />
intended to unite the island with Greece,<br />
Turkey sent in troops. Overnight, hundreds<br />
of thousands were turned into refugees;<br />
Stylianides’s home was close to the UNpatrolled<br />
Green Line, which to this day<br />
bisects the capital.<br />
Mildmannered Stylianides trained and<br />
worked as a dental surgeon before going<br />
into politics. Although liberal by inclination,<br />
his political career has always been with the<br />
centreright Democratic Rally party, DISY, on<br />
the grounds that it takes a more conciliatory<br />
approach to reuniting Cyprus.<br />
From 199899 and, again, from 201314<br />
he served as government spokesman,<br />
gaining a reputation as a moderate and a<br />
pragmatist.<br />
Stylianides is also seen a risktaker. Aides<br />
speak of his pioneering role in social rights:<br />
despite the deeply conservative views of<br />
most of his compatriots, the politician has<br />
been a champion of equality for<br />
homosexuals, participating in the island’s<br />
first gay pride parade earlier this year.<br />
A hardcore Europeanist, he advocated<br />
Cyprus’s accession to the European Union<br />
as far back as the mid1990s, when he<br />
cofounded the Movement for Political<br />
Modernisation and Reform. Similarly, he<br />
supported the controversial United Nationsbrokered<br />
blueprint for Cyprus known as the<br />
Annan plan, which called for an end to the<br />
island’s division and for reunification of its<br />
two feuding communities in a bizonal,<br />
bicommunal federation – in a referendum<br />
in 2004, the plan was accepted by a<br />
majority of Turkish Cypriots but<br />
overwhelmingly rejected by Stylianides’s<br />
fellow Greeks Cypriots.<br />
Stylianides told MEPs that he also wanted<br />
to concentrate on the crises that, ignored<br />
and forgotten, were out of the news: “I<br />
CV<br />
2014 Elected as a member of the<br />
European Parliament<br />
2013-14 Government spokesperson<br />
2011-13 Vice-chairman of the foreign and<br />
European affairs committee<br />
2011-13 Member of the bureau of the<br />
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly<br />
2006-13 Member of the Cyprus House of<br />
Representatives<br />
2006-11 Member of the OSCE<br />
Parliamentary Assembly<br />
1998-99 Government spokesman<br />
1984 Degree in dental surgery<br />
want to be the spokesman of the most<br />
vulnerable, the voice of the voiceless.<br />
The EU must not arrive with too little, too<br />
late. Not even once!”<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Themis Christophidou<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Kim Eling<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Sohial Luka<br />
Davinia Wood (maternity leave,<br />
replaced by Caterine Ebah-<br />
Moussa)<br />
Myrto Zambarta<br />
Mathieu Briens<br />
Zacharias Giakoumis<br />
Stylianides’s private office is headed by<br />
Themis Christophidou from Greece, who<br />
served as deputy head of cabinet for<br />
then fisheries commissioner Maria<br />
Damanaki. Christophidou has a long<br />
experience within the European<br />
Comission. She was working in Brussels<br />
before Cyprus joined the European<br />
Union. Before working for Damanaki,<br />
Christophidou had also served as<br />
deputy head of cabinet for Androulla<br />
Vassiliou, Cyprus’s previous<br />
commissioner. Kim Eling, formerly<br />
deputy chef for Kristalina Georgieva, will<br />
serve as deputy chef for Stylianides. He<br />
previously served as deputy head of<br />
cabinet for Georgieva when she was<br />
commissioner for humanitarian aid. He<br />
was in charge of Central and Western<br />
Africa, as well as relations with the US<br />
and Canada.<br />
49
COMMISSIONER<br />
Marianne Thyssen<br />
Employment, social affairs, skills<br />
and labour mobility<br />
Country<br />
Born<br />
Belgium<br />
Sint-Gillis-Waas,<br />
24 July 1956<br />
Political affiliation EPP<br />
Twitter<br />
@mariannethyssen<br />
As the European commissioner for<br />
employment, social affairs, skills and<br />
labour mobility, Marianne Thyssen is<br />
charged with getting more European<br />
citizens into work and increasing career<br />
opportunities. In some respects, she is<br />
eminently qualified: she has worked hard to<br />
get where she is now and has blazed a trail<br />
for women in Belgian public life. Yet her<br />
career also demonstrates the importance of<br />
chance. For her, opportunities were created<br />
by a mix of accident and luck, seasoned<br />
with a welldeveloped sense of duty.<br />
It was former president of the European<br />
Council (200914), Herman Van Rompuy,<br />
who persuaded Thyssen to embark on a<br />
political career and to put herself forward<br />
as a candidate for the European Parliament<br />
for the 1989 elections.<br />
Thyssen, who was born in eastern<br />
Flanders, came from outside the world of<br />
politics: her family owned a bakery and she<br />
was director of the research and advisory<br />
section of Unizo, which represents small<br />
businesses and the selfemployed. She<br />
harboured no ambition to go into frontline<br />
politics and her colleagues had a hard time<br />
persuading her to make the leap. At the<br />
time, she says, she had “the best job in the<br />
world”.<br />
Thyssen did not get elected in the 1989<br />
contest, but became an MEP two years later<br />
when she took the place of Karel Pinxten,<br />
who had moved to the Belgian senate.<br />
What was unforeseeable then was that she<br />
would remain an MEP for the next 23 years,<br />
leaving only when she was nominated for<br />
the European <strong>Commission</strong>.<br />
Belgium’s choice of a European<br />
commissioner became caught up in the<br />
struggle to form a national government – a<br />
general election had been held on 25 May,<br />
the same day as the elections to the<br />
European Parliament. To the surprise of<br />
some, her CD&V party chose to secure the<br />
post of commissioner for Thyssen instead of<br />
taking the prime ministerial job.<br />
What made her nomination easier was<br />
that in the Parliament she enjoyed support<br />
that crosses party boundaries. She has none<br />
of the bigego abrasiveness that was a<br />
feature of her predecessors in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> – Karel De Gucht and Louis<br />
50<br />
Michel. Whether in Flemish or European<br />
politics, party colleagues and opponents<br />
alike are – without exception – positive<br />
about her.<br />
While an MEP, she also exercised a second<br />
mandate in local politics, which the Belgian<br />
political system permits in theory and the<br />
proximity of the European Parliament<br />
permits in practice. She was a member of<br />
the municipal council of Oud Heverlee, just<br />
to the south of Leuven, but relinquished<br />
some of her local duties in the last years of<br />
her time as an MEP – in part to allow her to<br />
work on important dossiers in the<br />
Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs<br />
committee.<br />
Additionally, in 2008 senior figures in the<br />
CD&V had asked Thyssen to take over the<br />
position of chairing the party. She had never<br />
made a secret of her preference for<br />
European rather than national politics,<br />
seeing Europe as her “natural<br />
environment,” yet she took up the national<br />
responsibility as grateful recognition that<br />
“the party has allowed me to stay in Europe<br />
for such a long time”.<br />
Party leadership was no easy task<br />
following many political crises and falling<br />
support for her party. Thyssen, who stepped<br />
down from the post in 2010, characterises<br />
CV<br />
2008-10 Leader of the CD&V (Flemish<br />
Christian Democrats)<br />
2004-09 First vice-president of the<br />
European People’s Party group in the<br />
European Parliament<br />
2001-08 First Alderman, Oud-Heverlee<br />
1999-2014 Head of the Belgian<br />
delegation of the European People’s Party<br />
group in the European Parliament<br />
1999-2014 Member of the European<br />
Parliament<br />
1995-2008 Municipal councillor,<br />
Oud-Heverlee<br />
1991 Acting secretary-general, Unizo<br />
1988-91 Director of research<br />
department, Unizo (Belgian SME<br />
organisation)<br />
1979-80 Research assistant, faculty of<br />
law, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven<br />
1979 Master’s degree in law, Katholieke<br />
Universiteit Leuven<br />
her time as party chair as “the most<br />
stressful period” of her life, though she said<br />
she would do it again if asked to.<br />
Although many in Belgian politics were<br />
disappointed that Thyssen was assigned<br />
only the employment and social affairs<br />
portfolio, her own reaction was that “she<br />
could not have wished for a better post”.<br />
Hers is a serious dossier and her staff can<br />
be sure that she will work hard to master<br />
its technicalities.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Stefaan Hermans<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Ruth Paserman<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Baudouin Baudru<br />
Inge Bernaerts<br />
Vasiliki Kokkori<br />
Julie Anne Fionda<br />
Luk Vanmaercke<br />
Raf de Backer<br />
Jonathan Stabenow<br />
Thyssen’s cabinet is led by Stefaan<br />
Hermans, a Belgian and a former head of<br />
unit in the department for research and<br />
innovation. Her deputy chef de cabinet, is<br />
Ruth Paserman, an Italian with an<br />
extensive track record in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, which she joined in 1996.<br />
Paserman joined a commissioner’s<br />
cabinet for the first time in 2009 when<br />
she worked for Antonio Tajani in the<br />
dpeartment for industry and<br />
entrepreneurship. She left in 2011 to<br />
become head of unit for industry and<br />
entreprise. Among Thyssen’s seven other<br />
cabinet members are four Belgians,<br />
including her current communications<br />
adviser Luk Vanmaercke. Her personal<br />
assistant, Raf De Backer, has worked with<br />
her for the past fifteen years.
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to help European policy-makers adapt VET to new demands.<br />
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51
COMMISSIONER<br />
Karmenu Vella<br />
Environment, maritime affairs<br />
and fisheries<br />
Country Malta<br />
Born Zurrieq, ˙ 19 June 1950<br />
Political affiliation PES<br />
Twitter<br />
@KarmenuVella<br />
Nicknames have a special significance<br />
in Malta. Whether a badge of<br />
individual respect (or notoriety), a<br />
man’s laqam will often tell you more about<br />
him than his entire CV.<br />
Karmenu Vella has had many titles in his<br />
40year political and business career:<br />
minister for public works, industry, tourism,<br />
the economy; chairman of the Corinthia<br />
Group of companies; shadow minister for<br />
finance, to name but a few. But to many in<br />
Malta he is known simply as “The Guy”: a<br />
nickname that goes back to his early<br />
campaigning days, when he was regarded as<br />
atypically urbane and wellgroomed for a<br />
representative of a bluecollar workers’<br />
party.<br />
The appellation reflects a quality that set<br />
Vella apart when he stood for parliament<br />
for the Labour Party in 1976, then in his<br />
mid20s. Often at odds with the militant<br />
Maltese socialism of the time, he projected<br />
an image of affable bonhomie. Likewise, his<br />
television appearances over four decades of<br />
electioneering have earned him a<br />
reputation as a softspoken, almost docile<br />
interlocutor – far more at home in his<br />
native Maltese than in English or Italian,<br />
though he speaks all three.<br />
Time has also endowed Vella with a<br />
certain venerability in Maltese politics.<br />
When he vacated his parliamentary seat in<br />
2014 he was one of only two MPs who had<br />
served uninterruptedly for 38 years.<br />
But Vella’s ascendancy in Maltese politics<br />
cannot be attributed to mere charisma. It is<br />
widely acknowledged that his enormous<br />
grassroots popularity would not have been<br />
possible without the special relationship he<br />
forged in the late 1960s with former prime<br />
minister Dom Mintoff.<br />
In those early days, Vella was “the Guy”<br />
who accompanied Mintoff wherever he<br />
went. This earned Vella another, less<br />
flattering nickname: “Mintoff’s pet”.<br />
Ironically, however, Vella would in later<br />
years be credited with a lead role in the<br />
post1992 transformation of the Labour<br />
Party.<br />
This collision between ‘Old’ and ‘New’<br />
Labour proved a defining moment for the<br />
party, which emerged ‘purged’, so to speak,<br />
of many faces from the old guard. Not Vella,<br />
however: he retained his prominence, in<br />
52<br />
government and opposition.<br />
Vella has been assigned sensitive cabinet<br />
posts in every Labour administration since<br />
1981. But it was in tourism that he left the<br />
most lasting impression. Tourism accounts<br />
for 14% of Malta’s GDP. Most would<br />
concede that it was under Vella’s<br />
management that the strategic importance<br />
of this sector was first given the concerted<br />
government attention many felt it deserved.<br />
For much the same reasons, however, not<br />
everyone sings Vella’s praises. Vella’s own<br />
direct interests in the sector have raised<br />
eyebrows. In 2001, while shadow tourism<br />
minister, Vella was appointed executive<br />
chairman of Corinthia Hotels International,<br />
Malta’s largest hotel chain.<br />
Tourism may be a speciality, but Vella has<br />
no experience in the areas that he is now<br />
responsible for as a European<br />
commissioner. That did not go unnoticed in<br />
his hearing before the European Parliament,<br />
where there were concerns about giving the<br />
environment portfolio to someone from a<br />
country that has a spring birdhunting<br />
season.<br />
Efforts have also consistently been made<br />
to resurrect Vella’s connections with<br />
Mintoff’s Labour government of the 1980s –<br />
a political administration that has since<br />
CV<br />
2013-14 Tourism and aviation minister<br />
2010-13 Chairman of Orange Travel<br />
Group<br />
2008-13 Co-ordinator of the Labour<br />
Party parliamentary group<br />
2008-10 Executive chairman of<br />
Mediterranean Construction Company<br />
2001-07 Executive chairman of Corinthia<br />
Hotels International<br />
2000 Master’s degree in tourism<br />
management, Sheffield Hallam University<br />
1996-98 Tourism minister<br />
1984-87 Industry minister<br />
1981-83 Public works minister<br />
1976-2014 Member of parliament<br />
1973-81 Architect<br />
1973 Degree in architecture and civil<br />
engineering<br />
been found guilty of human rights<br />
violations. As The Times of Malta put it last<br />
year: “There were allegations against the<br />
government over political thuggery, tax<br />
evasion and corruption.” Vella has not been<br />
implicated in any such allegations; and even<br />
his political opponents concede in private<br />
that he is a difficult man to dislike. In a<br />
country that routinely throws up political<br />
heroes and villains, “The Guy” does not<br />
quite fit into either role.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Patrick Costello<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Gabriella Pace<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Jürgen Müller<br />
Aurore Maillet<br />
András Inotai<br />
Andrew Bianco<br />
Lanfranco Fanti<br />
Antonina Rousseva<br />
Brian Synnott<br />
Costello was deputy to the chair of the<br />
EU’s Political and Security Committee, a<br />
group of member states’ ambassadors<br />
dealing with security issues, in 2011-14<br />
and deputy head of unit in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s external relations<br />
department in 2009-11. He worked for<br />
Margot Wallström, the commissioner<br />
for communication and interinstitutional<br />
relations, in 2007-09 and<br />
for Josep Borrell, European Parliament<br />
president, in 2004-06. The office’s<br />
deputy head of cabinet is Gabriella Pace,<br />
a Maltese who worked with the<br />
European Central Bank from 2009 as a<br />
senior lawyer.
COMMISSIONER<br />
Margrethe Vestager<br />
Competition<br />
Country Denmark<br />
Born Glostrup, 13 April 1968<br />
Political affiliation ALDE<br />
Twitter<br />
@vestager<br />
Much has been made of the parallels<br />
between Danish politician<br />
Margrethe Vestager and the<br />
fictional female prime minister of Denmark<br />
in the cult TV series Borgen. Vestager has<br />
even revealed that an actor researching the<br />
programme followed her around to get a<br />
feel for the life of a highprofile female<br />
politician in the midst of Denmark’s often<br />
evolving coalition politics.<br />
Which is why, shortly after Vestager was<br />
awarded the influential competition<br />
portfolio in the JeanClaude Juncker<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, TV buffs delved into their DVD<br />
box sets to take another look at episode 12<br />
of Borgen, set in and around the seat of<br />
Danish government, Copenhagen’s<br />
Christiansborg Palace.<br />
The episode is called “In Brussels, no one<br />
can hear you scream” and it tells of a<br />
ruthless move by the prime minister to rid<br />
herself of a rival by awarding him the role of<br />
commissioner – the implication being that<br />
the EU is where political careers go to die. It<br />
was a case of artimitatinglifeimitatingart,<br />
although Vestager was not the prime<br />
minister, but the rival being sent to political<br />
Siberia.<br />
Vestager was Denmark’s minister for<br />
economic affairs and the interior from 2011<br />
until her resignation late in 2014. As the<br />
leader of the centrist Radikale Venstre<br />
(Radical Left) party, she was one of only two<br />
Danish ministers who had any experience of<br />
government before 2011 when the threeparty<br />
centreleft coalition came to power,<br />
under social democrat Prime Minister Helle<br />
ThorningSchmidt.<br />
After appointing Vestager to the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>, ThorningSchmidt had kind<br />
words for her deputy, who had played such<br />
a large part in setting Denmark’s economic<br />
course. “I will miss Margrethe, with whom I<br />
have had a good working relationship,”<br />
ThorningSchmidt said. Yet the relationship<br />
between the two politicians was reportedly<br />
frosty, with Vestager’s strong vision casting<br />
a shadow over the attimestroubled<br />
leadership of ThorningSchmidt.<br />
In real life there appears little to suggest<br />
that Brussels will be the kiss of death for<br />
Vestager’s career. Unleashing an arguably<br />
unrivalled charm offensive during her<br />
hearing before the European Parliament’s<br />
economic affairs committee, the 46yearold<br />
economist vowed to be a tireless<br />
campaigner for competition – and not just<br />
because it makes good business sense.<br />
“Competition policy is neither bureaucracy<br />
nor technicalities,” she said. “It is [about]<br />
values – and these I have found in the<br />
European Parliament.”<br />
MEPs appeared comfortable both with<br />
Vestager’s mastery of the brief and her<br />
commitment to defend her independence<br />
from the big end of town. “I will listen to<br />
everyone – from the largest multinationals<br />
to the representatives of small firms,”<br />
Vestager said. “But the analysis of my staff,<br />
and my own judgement, will not be swayed<br />
by anyone.”<br />
Vestager was born just outside<br />
Copenhagen but grew up in rural Ølgod with<br />
parents who were both Lutheran pastors.<br />
Both were cardcarrying members of<br />
Radikale Venstre – a socially progressive but<br />
economically dry party that Vestager’s<br />
greatgreat grandfather helped to found.<br />
She joined at a young age, standing for<br />
parliament when she was just 20 (without<br />
success), and becoming national<br />
chairwoman after leaving university in<br />
1993 at the age of 25.<br />
In 1998, at the age of 29, Vestager<br />
became minister for education and<br />
ecclesiastical affairs, a position that put her<br />
in charge of the Danish state church –<br />
CV<br />
2011-14 Economic affairs and interior<br />
minister<br />
2007-14 Leader of Radikale Venstre<br />
2001-14 Member of parliament<br />
2000-01 Education minister<br />
1998-2000 Education and ecclesiastical<br />
affairs minister<br />
1997-98 Head of secretariat, Agency<br />
for Financial Management and<br />
Administrative Affairs<br />
1995-97 Special consultant, Agency<br />
for Financial Management and<br />
Administrative Affairs<br />
1993-95 Head of section, Finance<br />
Ministry<br />
1993 Master of science in economics,<br />
University of Copenhagen<br />
making her, in effect, her parents’ boss.<br />
Elections in 2001 removed the party from<br />
government but finally gave Vestager a seat<br />
in parliament. In 2007 she took over the<br />
party’s reins and under her leadership it<br />
gained its ‘Radicool’ image as the party of<br />
the cultural elite.<br />
Vestager was known for running and<br />
walking her dog around her Copenhagen<br />
neighbourhood, and she preferred her bike<br />
to the ministerial car service. Her personal<br />
life has none of the messiness of her<br />
fictional counterpart on Borgen: she is<br />
married to academic Thomas Jensen and<br />
they have three daughters: Maria, Rebecca<br />
and Ella.<br />
Cabinet<br />
Head of cabinet<br />
Ditte Juul-Jørgensen<br />
Deputy head of cabinet<br />
Linsey McCallum<br />
Cabinet members<br />
Søren Schønberg<br />
Astrid Cousin<br />
Friedrich Wenzel Bulst<br />
Claes Bengtsson<br />
Christina Holm-Eiberg<br />
Mette Dyrskjøt<br />
Thomas George<br />
Linsey McCallum, a British lawyer who<br />
has been at the <strong>Commission</strong> for 21<br />
years, is the deputy head of cabinet and<br />
was a contemporary of Juul Jørgensen<br />
at the College of Europe. Previously a<br />
director in the directorate-general for<br />
competition, McCallum is a veteran of<br />
antitrust cases in the technology sector,<br />
which should prove useful. Vestager’s<br />
Danish head of cabinet, Ditte Juul-<br />
Jørgensen, was a director in the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>’s department for trade.<br />
Senior adviser Søren Schønberg was in<br />
the cabinet of Cecilia Malmström when<br />
she was commissioner for home affairs.<br />
53
GENDER BALANCE<br />
Hitting targets<br />
The European <strong>Commission</strong>’s gender<br />
balance – or lack of it – had the<br />
dubious honour of being the<br />
controversy which cast a shadow over Jean<br />
Claude Juncker’s presidency even before the<br />
Luxembourg politician had officially taken<br />
office. Juncker had wanted to appoint at<br />
least as many female commissioners as his<br />
predecessor José Manuel Barroso, who<br />
counted nine women among his 27<br />
(subsequently 28) commissioners during his<br />
second mandate (200914). Juncker was<br />
even subjected to a ’10 or more’ campaign<br />
– a social media meme featuring photos of<br />
outgoing female commissioners holding<br />
both hands up in a 10finger salute.<br />
It was not to be. In spite of a promise to<br />
offer female commissioners’ more<br />
prestigious portfolios, most member states<br />
put forward male candidates and Juncker<br />
was only able to match Barroso’s nine when<br />
Poland eventually selected Elżbieta<br />
Bieńkowska. Instead, Juncker set a more<br />
ambitious – and perhaps more realistic –<br />
target to improve female representation in<br />
the ranks of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s middle and<br />
senior management – in short, in the ranks<br />
of the officials rather than those nominated<br />
by politicians. As outlined in his mission<br />
letter to Kristalina Georgieva, the<br />
commissioner for budget and human<br />
resources, Juncker had set the target of 40%<br />
female representation for senior and middle<br />
management staff in his term. The<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> president also asked Georgieva<br />
to “pay particular attention to gender<br />
equality in the recruitment process and<br />
throughout the career path”.<br />
The Barroso II <strong>Commission</strong> had worked on<br />
an ‘equal opportunity strategy’ from 201014<br />
to increase the number of female staff for<br />
three management areas in which women<br />
were underrepresented. By the end of 2014,<br />
women were to make up 25% of senior<br />
management posts, meaning that a third of<br />
appointments to replace those leaving for<br />
retirement should be women. Additionally,<br />
Barroso wanted women to make up 30% of<br />
middlemanagement and 43% of nonmanagement<br />
administrator posts.<br />
It was a concerted effort on the part of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong> which saw those targets<br />
met in February 2014. <strong>Commission</strong> research<br />
revealed that job flexibility was an<br />
important factor in encouraging women civil<br />
servants to take on greater responsibilities.<br />
An attempt was also made to create a work<br />
environment in which “men and women are<br />
offered the best chances of contributing<br />
<strong>full</strong>y to the success of the organisation”.<br />
The latest figures show that almost 28% of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>’s senior managers were<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> staff by age and gender<br />
AGE FEMALE<br />
MALE<br />
21 - 22 1 100.0%<br />
23 - 24 4 66.7% 2 33,3%<br />
24 - 26 25 61.0% 16 39.0%<br />
27 - 28 83 62.4% 50 37.6%<br />
29 - 30 194 70.5% 81 29.5%<br />
31 - 32 342 66.7% 171 33.3%<br />
33 - 34 637 65.5% 336 34.5%<br />
35 - 36 958 64.5% 527 35.5%<br />
37 - 38 1,016 62.5% 610 37.5%<br />
39 - 40 930 57.1% 700 42.9%<br />
41 - 42 865 57.7% 635 42.3%<br />
43 - 44 879 54.6% 730 45.4%<br />
45 - 46 959 53.8% 822 46.2%<br />
47 - 48 965 51.8% 898 48.2%<br />
49 - 50 895 50.5% 877 49.5%<br />
51 - 52 864 49.9% 868 50.1%<br />
53 - 54 816 46.8% 929 53.2%<br />
55 - 56 667 43.6% 863 56.4%<br />
57 - 58 547 41.0% 788 59.0%<br />
59 - 60 389 38.2% 629 61.8%<br />
61 - 62 243 37.3% 408 62.7%<br />
63 - 64 141 35.3% 258 64.7%<br />
65 - 66 12 31.6% 26 68.4%<br />
67 - 68 1 100.0%<br />
women, who also made up 30% of middle<br />
management positions and 43% of nonmanagement<br />
positions. All this adds up to<br />
significant progress over the past 20 years:<br />
in 1995 women made up a mere 4% of<br />
senior management roles, 10% of middle<br />
management positions and almost 24% of<br />
nonmanagement staff.<br />
Yet Juncker is now aiming for more and<br />
set the 40% target for all three management<br />
categories. As things stand, of the 13,517<br />
officials working at the <strong>Commission</strong> on 1<br />
January, 42.2% are female.<br />
Yet there is another staffing discrepancy<br />
which may prove harder to address:<br />
national representation. If broken down by<br />
country of origin, the <strong>Commission</strong>’s staff is<br />
not particularly representative, particularly<br />
as staff regulations state clearly that<br />
recruitment and appointments are to be<br />
Source: European <strong>Commission</strong><br />
made on the “broadest possible<br />
geographical basis” from nationals of all EU<br />
member states. Recruitment is underpinned<br />
by a complex formula, which takes into<br />
account a country’s total population, its<br />
number of seats in parliament and its<br />
weight in the Council of Ministers.<br />
The regulations also say that no post can<br />
be set aside for nationals from a given<br />
member state and that competence<br />
relevant to the function should be the main<br />
selection criterion. There was an exception<br />
to this rule: the transition period after EU<br />
enlargement, in which compulsory<br />
recruitment targets were set and specific<br />
posts could be reserved for the nationals<br />
from new memberstates in a bid to boost<br />
their numbers. Croatia, which joined the EU<br />
in 2013, was to benefit from this form of<br />
positive discrimination until mid2018.<br />
54
LOCATION<br />
Where in the world<br />
Most of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s 34,000 officials are based in<br />
Brussels, working in more than 70 buildings. Most of<br />
these buildings are located around the European<br />
quarter near Schuman roundabout although the <strong>Commission</strong><br />
does have offices in Evere, eastern Brussels on the way to NATO,<br />
and Beaulieu in southeastern Brussels.<br />
The location of <strong>Commission</strong> departments has been overhauled<br />
recently as a result of reorganisations decided by JeanClaude<br />
Juncker when he became president of the <strong>Commission</strong>. For an<br />
uptodate directory of the addresses of <strong>Commission</strong><br />
departments check the <strong>Commission</strong> directory<br />
http://europa.eu/whoiswho/public/index.cfm?lang=en<br />
There are also 3,900 <strong>Commission</strong> officials working in<br />
Luxembourg. <strong>Commission</strong> offices in Luxembourg include<br />
Eurostat, the EU’s statistical service, and parts of the health,<br />
translation, IT and payments departments. <strong>Commission</strong> staff in<br />
Luxembourg are likely to move buildings soon because of work at<br />
some of the <strong>Commission</strong> offices.<br />
A list of all the <strong>Commission</strong>’s buildings in Brussels can be<br />
found here:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/oib/buildings_en.cfm<br />
A list of all the <strong>Commission</strong>’s buildings in Luxembourg can be<br />
found here:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/oil/batiments_en.htm<br />
The <strong>Commission</strong> also has representations in each of the 28 EU<br />
member states. A list of the representations can be found<br />
here:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/represent_en.htm<br />
<strong>Commission</strong> staff also work in the EU’s delegations to third<br />
countries and international organisations which are headed<br />
by a member of the European External Action Service.<br />
A <strong>full</strong> list of the EU’s delegations can be found here:<br />
http://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/index_en.htm<br />
Useful links<br />
Webpage of JeanClaude Juncker, president of the<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/commission/20142019/president_en<br />
The commissioners’ webpages:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/commission/20142019_en<br />
Official Journal:<br />
http://eurlex.europa.eu/oj/directaccess.html<br />
Transparency register:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/homePage.do<br />
EU who is who:<br />
http://europa.eu/whoiswho/public/<br />
Centralised page of departments and services:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/about/ds_en.htm<br />
Executive agencies:<br />
http://europa.eu/abouteu/agencies/index_en.htm<br />
Historical archives:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/historical_archives/index_en.htm<br />
Audiovisual and photo service:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/photo/<br />
CVs’ of the <strong>Commission</strong>’s directorsgeneral, deputy directorsgeneral<br />
and equivalent senior management officials:<br />
http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/about/who/dg_en.htm<br />
55
PAY<br />
European commissioners: what they earn<br />
President<br />
Jean-Claude Juncker<br />
Annual salary: €306,655<br />
High representative<br />
security policy<br />
Federica Mogherini<br />
Annual salary: €288,877<br />
The salaries of European commissioners are set<br />
at 112.5% of the pay of an official at grade A16,<br />
step 3 (see facing page). The president of the<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong> is paid 138% of this<br />
grade and the vice-president 125%. The high<br />
representative, who is also a vice-president of<br />
the <strong>Commission</strong>, is paid 130%.<br />
Vice-presidents<br />
Annual salary: €277,767<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>ers<br />
Annual salary: €249,990<br />
On joining the <strong>Commission</strong>, a<br />
commissioner is entitled to an<br />
installation allowance of two<br />
months’ salary.<br />
a residence allowance of 15% of their<br />
basic salary and a monthly allowance<br />
for representative expenses (€1,418 for<br />
the president, €911 for vice-presidents<br />
and €608 for other commissioners).<br />
On leaving the <strong>Commission</strong>,<br />
commissioners are entitled to a<br />
resettlement allowance of one month’s<br />
basic salary and a three-year<br />
transitional allowance of 40%-65% of<br />
their salary, which is reduced if they<br />
take up new, paid activities.<br />
<strong>Commission</strong>ers can draw their pensions<br />
from 65. The pension may not exceed<br />
70% of the final basic salary. It is<br />
calculated at 4.275% of the basic salary<br />
Travel and removal costs are also<br />
reimbursed.<br />
Salaries are subject to EU tax (8%-45%)<br />
and a solidarity levy of 7%.<br />
56
PAY<br />
European <strong>Commission</strong> salaries (January 2015)<br />
Step<br />
monthly, in euro<br />
Grade 1 2 3 4 5<br />
16 17 054.40 17 771.05 18 517.81<br />
15 15 073.24 15 706.64 16 366.65 16 822.00 17 054.40<br />
14 13 322.22 13 882.04 14 465.38 14 867.83 15 073.24<br />
13 11 774.62 12 269.40 12 784.98 13 140.68 13 322.22<br />
12 10 406.80 10 844.10 11 299.79 11 614.16 11 774.62<br />
11 9 197.87 9 584.37 9 987.12 10 264.98 10 406.80<br />
10 8 129.38 8 470.99 8 826.95 9 072.53 9 197.87<br />
9 7 185.01 7 486.94 7 801.55 8 018.60 8 129.38<br />
8 6 350.35 6 617.20 6 895.26 7 087.10 7 185.01<br />
7 5 612.65 5 848.50 6 094.26 6 263.81 6 350.35<br />
6 4 960.64 5 169.10 5 386.31 5 536.16 5 612.65<br />
5 4 384.38 4 568.62 4 760.60 4 893.04 4 960.64<br />
4 3 875.06 4 037.89 4 207.57 4 324.63 4 384.38<br />
3 3 424.90 3 568.82 3 718.79 3 822.25 3 875.06<br />
2 3 027.04 3 154.24 3 286.79 3 378.23 3 424.90<br />
1 2 675.40 2 787.82 2 904.97 2 985.79 3 027.04<br />
Assistants can be employed at grades 1-11, secretaries and clerks at grades 1-6 and<br />
<br />
on policy is AD5. Assistants can become administrators if they undergo training and<br />
pass exams relating to administrators’ tasks.<br />
<br />
until they advance to the next grade. Administrators can reach grade AD12 through<br />
such promotion alone.<br />
<br />
<br />
managers in the <strong>Commission</strong> at head of unit level have to be at least AD9.<br />
<br />
57
INDEX<br />
Alexandrova, Sophie P17<br />
Andriukaitis, Vytenis P27, 34<br />
Ansip, Andrus P10, 11, 18, 35<br />
Arias Canete, Miguel P10, 11, 28, 34<br />
Avramopoulos, Dimitris P30, 34<br />
Balta, Liene P12<br />
Baltazar, Telmo P9<br />
Barroso, José Manuel P10, 24<br />
Battista, Jasmin P18<br />
Bieńkowska, Elżbieta P11, 31, 34<br />
Borisov, Boyko P17<br />
Bulc, Violeta P11, 32, 34<br />
Cameron, David P8<br />
Chapuis, Laure P18<br />
Colombani, Antoine P12<br />
Crețu, Corina P11, 33, 35<br />
Curtis, Michael P14<br />
Day, Catherine P42<br />
DejmekHack, Paulina P9<br />
Delors, Jacques P9<br />
Delvaux Léon P9<br />
Dombrovskis, Valdis P10, 11, 22, 35<br />
Draghi, Mario P8<br />
FernandezShaw, Felix P14<br />
Georgieva, Kristalina P10, 11, 17, 34<br />
Giorev, Daniel P17<br />
Grazin, Igor P18<br />
Gren, Jörgen P18<br />
GrosTchorbadjiyska, Angelina P17<br />
Hahn, Johannes P11, 16, 36, 35<br />
Hill, Jonathan (commissioner) P11, 24, 35, 37<br />
Hill, Jonathan (head of cabinet) P47<br />
Hinrikus, Hanna P18<br />
Hogan, Phil P11, 35, 38<br />
Hristcheva, Mariana P17<br />
Illiev, Dimo P17<br />
Italianer, Alexander P42<br />
Järven, Aare P18<br />
Jennings, Michael P17<br />
Jourová, Věra P11, 35, 40<br />
Juncker, JeanClaude P4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 24,<br />
26, 34, 42, 54, 56<br />
Karshovski, Ivan P17<br />
Kasel, Antoine P9<br />
Katainen, Jyrki P11, 23, 35<br />
Kloc, Kamila P18<br />
Kostov, Ivan P17<br />
Kramer, Sandra P9<br />
Kroes, Neelie P26<br />
Laitenberger, Johannes P9<br />
Lamy, Pascal P9<br />
Lepassaar, Juhan p18<br />
Le Roy, Alain P16<br />
Maggi, Riccardo P12<br />
Malmström, Cecilia P10, 11, 16, 34, 41<br />
Manservisi, Stefano P14, 15, 16, 42<br />
Martenczuk, Bernd P12<br />
MartinezAlberola, Clara P9<br />
Mettler, Ann P26<br />
Mimica, Neven P10, 11, 16, 34, 43<br />
Moedas, Carlos P11, 34, 44<br />
Mogherini, Federica P10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 34<br />
Mogherini, Flavio P14<br />
Moscovici, Pierre P10, 11, 46, 34<br />
Navracsics, Tibor P11, 34, 47<br />
Nelen, Sarah P12<br />
Oettinger, Günther P10, 11, 18, 35, 48<br />
Padar, Ivari P18<br />
Panzetti, Fabrizia P14<br />
Petrocelli, Enrico P14<br />
Piorko, Iwona P14<br />
Prodi, Romano P15<br />
Putin, Vladimir P14<br />
Ray, Catherine P14<br />
Rebesani, Matteo P14<br />
Rentschler, Oliver P14<br />
Renzi, Matteo P14<br />
Requena, Luis Romero P42<br />
Richard, Alice P12<br />
Rõivas, Taavi P18<br />
Rouch, Pauline P9<br />
Santer, Jacques P8<br />
Sarkozy, Nicolas P8<br />
ŠefČoviČ, Maroš P10, 11, 20, 26, 35<br />
Selmayr, Martin P9, 42<br />
Servoz, Michel P42<br />
Schwarz, Andreas P17<br />
Smit, Maarten P12<br />
Smith, Jeremy P18<br />
Smulders, Ben P12<br />
Strotmann, Maximilian P18<br />
Stylianides, Christos P10, 11, 16, 49, 35<br />
Sutton, Michelle P12<br />
Szostak, Richard P9<br />
Tholoniat, Luc P9<br />
Thyssen, Marianne P10, 11, 50, 35<br />
Timmermans, Frans P10, 11, 12, 24<br />
Trichet, JeanClaude P8<br />
Tusk, Donald P14<br />
Ustubs, Peteris P14<br />
Van Bueren, Saar P12<br />
Van Rompuy, Herman P8<br />
Vannini, Arianna P14<br />
Vella, Karmenu P11, 35, 52<br />
Veltroni, Walter P14<br />
Vezyroglou, Anna P14<br />
Vestager, Margrethe P35, 53<br />
Werner, Elisabeth P17<br />
Zadra, Carlo P9<br />
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